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LOCKE'S ESSAYS 



AN ESSAY 

?6 



CONCERNING 



HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



AND 

A TREATISE 

ON 



THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 



BY 



JOHN LOCKE, GENT, 



COMPLETE, IN ONE VOLUME: WITH THE AUTHOR'S LAST ADDITIONS AND 
CORRECTIONS. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

TROUTMAN & HAYES, 193, MARKET STREET. 

PITTSBURGH:— KAY & CO. 

18 5 3. 



A 



an* 



PRINTED BY SMITH & PETERS, 
Franklin Buildings, Sixth Bteset haiow Arch, Philadelphia. 



LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 



JOHN LOCKE, one of the most eminent philosophers, and valuable 
writers of his age and country, was born at Wrington, in Somersetshire 
en the 29th August 1632. His father, who had been bred to the law, acted 
in the capacity of steward, or court -keeper to colonel Alexander Popham, 
by whose interest, on the breaking out of the civil law, he became a cap- 
tain in the service of parliament. The subject of this article was sent, at a 
proper age, to Westminster school, whence he was elected in 1CCI to 
Christ-church college, Oxford. Here he much distinguished himself for 
his application and proficiency ; and having taken the degree of BA. in 
1655, and of MA. in 1658, he applied himself to the study of physic. In 
the year 1664, he accepted of an offer to go abroad, in the capacity of secre- 
tary to sir William Swan, appointed envoy from Charles II. to the elector 
of Brandenburg, and other German princes ; but he returned in the course 
of a year, and resumed his studies with renewed ardour. In 1666 he was 
introduced to Lord Ashley, afterwards the celebrated politicaJ earl of 
Shaftesbury, to whom he became essentially serviceable in his medical ca- 
pacity, and who was led to form so high an opinion of his general powers, 
that he prevailed upon him to take up his residence in his house, and urged 
him to apply his studies to politics and philosophy. By his acquaintance 
with this nobleman, Mr Locke was introduced to the duke of Buckingham, 
the earl of Halifax, and others of the most eminent persons of their day. 
In 1668, at the request of the earl and countess of Northumberland, he ac- 
companied them in a tour to France ; and on his return was employed by 
lord Ashley, then chancellor of the exchequer, in drawing up the funda- 
mental constitutions of the American state of Carolina. He also inspected 
the education of that nobleman's son, and was much consulted on the mar- 
riage of the latter, the eldest son, by which was the celebrated author of the 
Characteristics. In 1670 he began to form the plan of his Essay on the 
Human Understanding ; and about the same time was made a fellow of the 
royal society. In 1672 lord Ashley, having been created earl of Shaftes- 
bury, and raised to the dignity of chancellor, he appointed Mr Locke to the 
office of secretary of presentations, which, however, he lost the following 
year, when the earl was obliged to resign the seals. Being still president 
of the board of trade, that nobleman then made Mr Locke secretary to the 
same ; but the commission being dissolved in 1674, he lost that appointment 
also. In the following year he graduated as a bachelor of physic, and being 
apprehensive of a consumption, travelled into France, and resided some 
time at Montpelier. In 1679 he returned to England, at the request of the 
earl of Shaftesbury, then again restored to power ; and in 1682, when that 
nobleman was obliged to retire to Holland, he accompanied him in his 
exile. On the death of his patron in that country, aware how much he was 
disliked by the predominant arbitrary faction at home, he chose to remain 
abroad ; and was in consequence accused of being the author of certain 



4 LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 

tracts against the English government ; and although these were afterwards 
discovered to be the work of another person, he was arbitrarily ejected from 
his studentship of Christ church, by the king's command. Thus assailed, 
he continued abroad, nobly refusing to accept a pardon, which the cele- 
brated William Penn undertook to procure for him, expressing himself like 
the chancellor L'Hospital, in similar circumstances, ignorant of the crimes 
of which he had been declared guilty. In 1685, when Monmouth undertook 
his ill-concerted enterprize, the English envoy at the Hague demanded the 
person of Mr Locke, and several others, which demand obliged him to con- 
ceal himself for nearly a year ; but in 1688 he again appeared in public, and 
formed a literary society at Amsterdam, in conjunction with Limborch, 
Le Clerc and others. During the time of his concealment, he also wrote 
his first " Letter concerning Toleration," which was printed at Gouda, in 
1689, under the title of " Epistola de Tolerantia," and was rapidly trans- 
lated into Dutch, French, and English. At the Revolution, this eminent 
person returned to England in the fleet which conveyed the princess of 
Orange, and being deemed a sufferer for the principles on which it was 
established, he was made a commissioner of appeals, and was soon after 
gratified by the establishment of toleration by law. In 1690 he published 
his celebrated " Essay concerning Human Understanding," which was in- 
stantly attacked by various writers among the oracles of learning, most of 
who?e names are now forgotten. It was even proposed, at a meeting of 
the heads of houses of the university of Oxford, to formally censure and 
discourage it ; but nothing was finally resolved upon, but that each master 
should endeavour to prevent its being read in his college. Neither this, 
however, nor any other opposition availed ; the reputation, both of the work 
and of the author, increased throughout Europe ; and besides being trans- 
lated into French and Latin, it had reached a fourth English edition, in 
1700. In 1690 Mr Locke published his second " Letter on Toleration ;" and 
in the same year appeared his two " Treatises on Government," in oppo- 
sition to the principles of sir Robert Filmer, and of the whole passive obe- 
dient school. He next wrote a pamphlet, entitled, " Some Considerations 
of the Consequences of lowering the Interest and Value of Money," 1691, 
8vo, which was followed by other smaller pieces on the same subject. In 
1692 he published a third " Letter on Toleration ;" and the following year 
his " Thoughts concerning Education." In 1695 he was made a commis- 
sioner of trade and plantations, and in the same year published his " Rea- 
sonableness of Christianity, as delivered in the Scriptures;" which being 
warmly attacked by Dr Edwards, in his " Socinianism Unmasked," Mr 
Locke followed with a first and second " Vindication," in which he de- 
fended himself with great mastery. The use made by Toland, and other 
latitudinarian writers, of the premises laid down in the " Essay on the 
Human Understanding," at length produced an opponent in the celebrated 
bishop Stillingfleet, who, in his " Defence of the Doctrine of the Trinity," 
censured some passages in Mr Locke's essay, and a controversy arose, in 
which the great reading and proficiency in ecclesiastical antiquities of the 
prelate, necessarily yielded in an argumentative contest to the reasoning 
powers of the philosopher. With his publications in this controversy, 
which were distinguished by peculiar mildness and urbanity, Mr Locke re- 
tired from the press, and his asthmatic complaint increasing, with the rec- 
titude which distinguished the whole of his conduct, he resigned his post 
of commissioner of trade and plantations, although ldng William was very 
unwilling to receive it, observing, that he could not in conscience hold a 
situation to which a considerable salary was attached, without performing 
the duties of it. From this time he lived wholly in retirement, where he 
applied himself to the study of scripture ; while the sufferings incidental to 
his disorders were materially alleviated by the kind attentions and agree- 
able conversation of lady Masham, who was the daughter of the learnea 



LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 5 

Dr Cudworth, and for many years his intimate friend. Mr Locke existed 
nearly two years in a very declining state, and at length expired in a man- 
ner correspondent with his great piety, equanimity, and rectitude, on the 
28tn of October, 1704. He was buried at Oates, where there is a neat 
monument erected to his memory, with a modest Latin inscription indited 
by himself. The moral, social, and political character of this eminent and 
valuable man, is sufficiently illustrated by the foregoing brief account of 
his life and labours ; and the effect of his writings upon the opinions, and 
even fortunes of mankind, will form the most forcible eulogium on his 
mental superiority. Of his " Essay on the Human Understanding" it may 
be said, that no book of the metaphysical class has ever been more gene- 
rally read; or, looking to its overthrow of the doctrine of innate ideas, none 
has produced greater consequences. In the opinion of Dr Reed he gave 
the first example in the English language of writing on abstract subjects 
with simplicity and perspicuity. No author has more successfully pointed 
out the danger of ambiguous words, and of having distinct notions on sub- 
jects of judgment and reasoning; while his observations on the various 
powers of the human understanding, on the use and abuse of words, and on 
the extent and limits of human knowledge, are drawn from an attentive 
reflection on the operations of his own mind, the only source of genuine 
knowledge on those subjects. Several topics, no doubt, are introduced into 
this celebrated production, which do not strictly belong to it, and some of 
its opinions have been justly controverted. In some instances, too, its 
author is verbose, and wanting in his characteristic perspicuity ; but with 
all these exceptions, and even amidst the improvements in metaphysical 
studies, to which this work itself has mainly conduced, it will ever prove 
a valuable guide in the acquirement of the science of the human mind. 
His next great work, his "Two Treatises- on Government," although neces- 
sarily opposed by the theorists of divine right and passive obedience, and 
by writers of jacobitical tendencies, essentially espouses the principles 
which, by placing the house of Brunswick on the throne of Great Britain, 
may be deemed the constitutional doctrine of the country, and as such it has 
been ably and unanswerably defended. Besides the works already men- 
tioned, Mr Locke left several MSS. behind him, from which his executors, 
sir Peter King and Mr. Anthony Collins, published in 1706, his paraphrase 
and notes upon St Paul's Epistles to the Galatians, Corinthians, Romans, 
and Ephesians, with an essay prefixed for the understanding of St Paul's 
Epistles, by a reference to St Paul himself. In 1706 the same parties pub- 
lished, " Posthumous Works of Mr Locke," 8vo, comprising a treatise 
"On the Conduct of the Understanding;" "An Examination of Male- 
branche's Opinion of seeing all Things in God," &c. 



AN ESSAY 



CONCERNING 



HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 



BY 



JOHN LOCKE, GENT 



TO 



THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THOMAS, 

EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY; 

BARON HERBERT OP CARDIFF, LORD ROSS OF KENDAL, PAR, FITZHUGH, 

MARMION, ST QUTNTIN, AND SHURLAND ; LORD PRESIDENT OF 

HIS MAJESTY'S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL. 

AND LORD LIEUTENANT OF THE COUNTY 

OF WILTS, AND SOUTH WALES. 

MY LORD, 

This Treatise, which is grown up under your lordship's eye, and 
has ventured into the world by your order, does now, by a natural kind of 
nght, come to your lordship for that protection, which you several years 
since promised it. It is not that I think any name, how great soever, set 
at the beginning of a book, will be able to cover the faults that are to be 
found in it. Things in print must stand and fall by their own worth, or the 
reader's fancy. But there being nothing more to be desired for truth than 
a fair, unprejudiced hearing, nobody is more like to procure me that than 
your lordship, who is allowed to have got so intimate an acquaintance 
with her, in her more retired recesses. Your lordship is known to have 
so far advanced your speculations in the most abstract and general know- 
ledge of things beyond the ordinary reach, or common methods, that your 
allowance and approbation of the design of this treatise will at least pre- 
serve it from being condemned without reading ; and will prevail to have 
those parts a little weighed, which might otherwise, perhaps, be thought to 
deserve no consideration, for being somewhat out of the common road. 
The imputation of novelty is a terrible charge among those who judge of 
men's heads, as they do of their perukes, by the fashion; and can allow 
none to be right, but the received doctrines. Truth scarce ever yet carried 
it by vote any where at its first appearance : new opinions are always sus- 
pected, and usually opposed without any other reason, but because they are 
not already common. But truth, like gold, is not the less so for being 
newly brought out of the mine. It is trial and examination must give it 
price, and not any antique fashion : and though it be not yet current by the 
public stamp ; yet it may, for all that, be as old as nature, and is certainly 
not the less genuine. Your lordship can give great and convincing in- 
stances of this, whenever you please to oblige the pubiic with some of those 
large and comprehensive discoveries you have made of truths hitherto un- 
known, unless to some few, from whom your lordship has been pleased not 
wholly to conceal them. This alone were a sufficient reason, were there 
no other, why I should dedicate this Essay to your lordship ; and its having 
' some little correspondence with some parts of that nobler and vast system 
of the sciences your lordship has made so new, exact, and instructive a 
draught of, I think it glory enough, if your lordship permit me to boast, 
B 9 



10 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 

that here and there I have fallen into some thoughts not wholly different 
from yours. If your lordship think fit, that, by your encouragement, this 
should appear in the world, I hope it may be a reason some time or other, 
to lead your lordship farther ; and you will allow me to say, that you here 
give the world an earnest of something, that, if they can bear with this, 
will be truly worthy their expectation. This, my lord, shows whaV a pre- 
sent I here make to your lordship ; just such as the. poor man does to his 
rich and great neighbour, by whom the basket of flowers or fruit is not ill 
taken, though he has more plenty of his own growth, and in much greater 
perfection. Worthless things receive a value, when they are made the 
offerings of respect, esteem, and gratitude : these you have given me so 
mighty and peculiar reasons to have, in the highest degree, for your lord- 
ship, that if they can add a price to what they go along with, proportion- 
able to their own greatness, I can with confidence brag, I here make your 
lordship the richest present you ever received. This I am sure, I am under 
the greatest obligations to seek all occasions to acknowledge a long train 
of favours I have received from your lordship : favours, though great and 
important in themselves, yet made much more so by the forwardness, con- 
cern, and kindness, and other obliging circumstances, that never failed to 
accompany them. To all this, you are pleased to add that which gives yet 
more weight and relish to all the rest : you vouchsafe to continue me in 
some degrees of your esteem, and allow me a place in your good thoughts ; 
1 had almost said friendship. This, my lord, your words and actions so 
constantly show on all occasions, even to others when I am absent, that it 
is not vanity in me to mention what every body knows : but it would be 
want of good manners, not to acknowledge what so many are witnesses of, 
and every day tell me I am indebted to your lordship for. I wish they 
could as easily assist my gratitude, as they convince me of the great and 
growing engagements it has to your lordship. This, I am sure, 1 should 
write of the understanding without having any, if I were not extremely 
sensible of them, and did not lay hold on this opportunity to testify to the 
world, how much I am obliged to be, and how much I am, My Lord, 
Your Lordship's most humble 

And most obedient servant. 

JOHN LOCKE. 

Dorset-Court, 
24 May, 1689. 



EPISTLE TO THE READER. 



Reader, 

I here put into thy hands, what has been the diversion of some of" 
rny idle and heavy hours : if it has the good luck to prove so of any of thine, 
and thou hast but half so much pleasure in reading, as I had in writing it, 
thou wilt as little think thy money, as I do my pains, ill bestowed. Mis- 
take not this for a commendation of my work ; nor conclude, because I was 
pleased with the doing of it, that therefore I am fondly taken with it now 
it is done. He that hawks at larks and sparrows, has no less sport, though 
a much less considerable quarry, than he that flies at nobler game : and he 
is little acquainted with the subject of this treatise, the understanding, 
who does not know, that as it is the most elevated faculty of the soul, so 
it is employed with a greater and more constant delight than any of the 
other. Its searches after truth are a sort of hawking and hunting, wherein 
the very pursuit makes a great part of the pleasure. Every step the mind 
takes in its progress towards knowledge, makes some discovery, which is 
not only new, but the best too, for the time at least. 

For the understanding, like the eye, judging of objects only by its own 
sight, cannot but be pleased with what it discovers, having less regret for 
what has escaped it, because it is unknown. Thus he who has raised him- 
self above the alms-basket, and, not content to live lazily on scraps of 
begged opinions, sets his own thoughts on work, to find and follow truth, 
will (whatever he lights on) not miss the hunter's satisfaction ; every mo- 
ment of his pursuit will reward his pains with some delight, and he will 
have reason to think his time not ill spent, even when he cannot much 
boast of any great acquisition. 

This, reader, is the entertainment of those who let loose their own 
thoughts, and follow them in writing ; which thou oughtest not to envy 
them, since they afford thee an opportunity of the like diversion, if thou 
wilt make use of thy own thoughts in reading. It is to them, if they are 
thy own, that I refer myself: but if they are taken upon trust from others, 
it is no great matter what they are, they not following truth, but some 
meaner consideration : and it is not worth while to be concerned, what he 
says or thinks, who says or thinks only as he is directed by another. If 
thou judgest for thyself, I know thou wilt judge candidly ; and then I shall 
not be harmed or offended, whatever be thy censure. For though it be cer- 
tain, that there is nothing in this treatise, of the truth whereof I am not 
fully persuaded ; yet I consider myself as liable to mistakes, as I can think 
thee, and know that this book must stand or fall with thee, not by any 
opinion I have of it, but thy own. If thou findest little in it new or in- 
structive to thee, thou art not to blame me for it. It was not meant for 
those that had already mastered this subject, and made a thorough ac- 
quaintance with their own understandings ; but for my own information, 
and the satisfaction of a few friends, who acknowledged themselves not to 

11 



12 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 

have sufficiently considered it. Were it fit to trouble thee with the history 
of this Essay, I should tell thee, that five or six friends meeting at my 
chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found them- 
selves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that rose on every side. After 
we had a while puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution 
of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts, that we took 
a wrong course : and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that 
nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects 
our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. This I proposed 
to the company, who all readily assented ; and thereupon it was agreed, 
that this should be our first inquiry. Some hasty and undigested thoughts 
on a subject I had never before considered, which I set down against our 
next meeting, gave the first entrance into this discourse ; which having 
been thus begun by chance, was continued by entreaty; written by inco- 
herent parcels ; and after long intervals of neglect, resumed again, as my 
humour or occasions permitted ; and at last, in a retirement, where an 
attendance on my health gave me leisure, it was brought into that order 
thou now seest it. 

This discontinued way of writing may have occasioned, besides others, 
two contrary faults, viz. that too little and too much maybe said in it. If 
thou findest any thing wanting, I shall be glad, that what I have writ gives 
thee any desire that I should have gone farther: if it seems too much to 
thee, thou must blame the subject ; for when I put pen to paper, I thought 
all I should have to say on this matter would have been contained in one 
sheet of paper ; but the farther I went, the larger prospect I had ; new dis- 
coveries led me still on, and so it grew insensibly to the bulk it now appears 
in. I will not deny, but possibly it might be reduced to a narrower com- 
pass than it is ; and that some parts of it might be contracted ; the way it 
has been writ in, by catches, and many long intervals of interruption, being 
apt to cause some repetitions. But to confess the truth, I am now too lazy, 
or too busy to make it shorter. 

I am not ignorant how little I herein consult my own reputation, when 
I knowingly let it go with a fault, so apt to disgust the most judicious, who 
are always the nicest readers. But they who know sloth is apt to content 
itself with any excuse, will pardon me, if mine has prevailed on me, where, 
T think, I have a very good one. I will riot therefore allege in my defence, 
tnat the same notion, having different respects, may be convenient or ne- 
cessary to prove or illustrate several parts of the same discourse ; and that 
so it has happened in many parts of this : but waiving that, I shall frankly 
avow, that I have sometimes dwelt long upon the same argument, and ex- 
pressed it different ways, with a quite different design. I pretend not to 
publish this Essay for the information of men of large thoughts, and quick 
apprehensions ; to such masters of knowledge I profess myself a scholar, 
and therefore warn them beforehand not to expect any thing here, but what, 
being spun out of my own coarse thoughts, is fitted to men of my own 
size ; to whom, perhaps, it will not be unacceptable, that I have taken some 
pains to make plain and familiar to their thoughts some truths, which esta- 
blished prejudice, or the abstractedness of the ideas themselves, might 
render difficult. Some objects had need be turned on every side ; and 
when the notion is new, as I confess some of these are to me, or out of the 
ordinary road, as I suspect they will appear to others ; it is not one simple 
view of it, that will gain it admittance into every understanding, or fix it 
there with a clear and lasting impression. There are few, I believe, who 
have not observed in themselves or others, that what in one way of pro- 
posing was very obscure, another way of expressing it has made very clear 
and intelligible : though afterward the mind found little difference in the 
phrases, and wondered why one failed to be understood more than the other. 
But every thing does not hit alike upon every man's imagination. We 



EPISTLE TO THE READER. 13 

have our understandings no less different than our palates ; and he that 
thinks the same truth shall be equally relished by every one in the same 
dress, may as well hope to feast every one with the same sort of cookery : 
the meat may be the same, and the nourishment good, yet every one not 
be ab*e to receive it with that seasoning ; and it must be dressed another 
way, if you will have it go down with some even of strong constitutions. 
The truth is, those who advised me to publish it, advised me', for this reason , 
to publish it as it is : and since I have been brought to let it go abroad, I 
desire it should be understood by whoever gives himself the pains to read 
it ; I have so little affection to be in print, that if I were not flattered this 
Essay might be of some use to others, as I think it has been to me, I 
should have confined it to the view of some friends, who gave the first oc- 
casion to it. My appearing therefore in print, being on purpose to be as 
useful as I may, I think it necessary to make what I have to say as easy 
and intelligible to all sorts of readers as I can. And I had much rather the 
speculative and quick-sighted should complain of my being in some parts 
tedious, than that any one, not accustomed to abstract speculations, or pre- 
possessed with different notions, should mistake, or not comprehend my 
meaning. 

It will possibly be censured as a great piece of vanity or insolence in me, 
to pretend to instruct this our knowing age ; it amounting to little less, 
when I own, that I publish this Essay with hopes it may be useful to others. 
But if it may be permitted to speak freely of those, who with a feigned 
modesty condemn as useless, what they themselves write, methinks it 
savours much more of vanity or insolence, to publish a book for any other 
end ; and he fails very much of that respect he owes the public, who prints, 
and consequently expects men should read that, wherein he intends not 
that they should meet with any thing of use to themselves or others : and 
should nothing else be found allowable in this treatise, yet my design will 
not cease to be so ; and the goodness of my intention ought to be some 
excuse for the worthlessness of my present. It is that chiefly which se- 
cures me from the fear of censure, which I expect not to escape more than 
better writers. Men's principles, notions, and relishes are so different, that 
it is hard to find a book which pleases or displeases all men. I acknow- 
ledge the age we live in is not the least knowing, and therefore not the 
most easy to be satisfied. If I have not the good luck to please, yet nobody 
ought to be offended with me. I plainly tell all my readers, except half a 
dozen, this treatise was not at first intended for them ; and therefore they 
need not be at the trouble to be of that number. But yet if any one thinks 
fit to be angry, and rail at it, he may do it securely : for I shall find some 
better way of spending my time than in such kind of conversation. I shall 
always have the satisfaction to have aimed sincerely at truth and useful- 
ness, though in one of the meanest ways. The commonwealth of learning 
is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs in ad- 
vancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of 
posterity : but every one must not hope to be a Boyle, or a Sydenham : and 
in an age that produces such masters, as the great Huygenius, and the in- 
comparable Mr Newton, with some others of that strain, it is ambition 
enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, 
and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge ; which 
certainly had been very much more advanced in the world, if the endea- 
vours of ingenious and industrious men had not been much cumbered with 
the learned but frivolous use of uncouth, affected, or unintelligible terms, 
introduced into the sciences, and there made an art of, to that degree, that 
philosophy, which is nothing but the true knowledge of things, was thought 
unfit, or incapable to be brought into well-bred company, and polite con- 
versation. Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language, 
have so long passed for mysteries of science ; and hard and misapplied 



14 OP HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 

words, with little or no meaning, have, by prescription, such a right to be 
mistaken for deep learning, and height of speculation, that it will not be 
easy to persuade either those who speak, or those who hear them, that 
they are but the covers of ignorance, and hinderance of true knowledge. 
To break in upon the sanctuary of vanity and ignorance, will be, I suppose, 
some service to human understanding ; though so few are apt to think they 
deceive or are deceived in the use of words, or that the language of the 
sect they are of has any faults in it, which ought to be examined or cor- 
rected ; that I hope I shall be pardoned, if I have in the third book dwelt 
long on this subject, and endeavoured to make it so plain, that neither the 
inveterateness of the mischief, nor the prevalence of the fashion, shall be 
any excuse for those who will not take care about the meaning of their own 
words, and will not suffer the significancy of their expressions to be in- 
quired into. 

I have been told that a short epitome of this treatise, which was printed 
1688, was by some condemned without reading, because innate ideas were 
denied in it ; they too hastily concluding, that if innate ideas were not sup- 
posed, there would be little left either of the notion or proof of spirits. If 
any one take the like offence at the entrance of this treatise, I shall desire 
him to read it through ; and then I hope he will be convinced, that the 
taking away false foundations, is not to the prejudice, but advantage of 
truth ; which is never injured or endangered so much, as when mixed with, 
or built on, falsehood. In the second edition, I added as followeth: 

The bookseller will not forgive me, if I say nothing of this second edi- 
tion, which he has promised, by the correctness of it, shall make amends 
for the many faults committed in the former. He desires too, that it should 
be known, that it has one whole new chapter concerning identity, and 
many additions and amendments in other places. These, I must inform 
my reader, are not all new matter, but most of them, either farther con- 
firmations of what I had said, or explications, to prevent others being mis- 
taken in the sense of what was formerly printed, and not any variation in 
me from it ; I must only except the alterations I have made in Book II, 
Chap. 21. 

What I had there writ concerning liberty and the will, I thought deserved 
as accurate a view as I was capable of: those subjects having in all ages 
exercised the learned part of the world with questions and difficulties that 
have not a little perplexed morality and divinity, those parts of knowledge 
that men are most concerned to be clear in. Upon a closer inspection into 
the working of men's minds, and a stricter examination of those motives 
and views they are turned by, I have found reason somewhat to alter the 
thoughts I formerly had concerning that, which gives the last determination 
to the will in all voluntary actions. This I cannot forbear to acknowledge 
to the world with as much freedom and readiness, as I at first published 
what then seemed to me to be right ; thinking myself more concerned to 
quit and renounce any opinion of my own, than oppose that of another, 
when truth appears against it. For it is truth alone I seek, and that will 
always be welcome to me, when or from whence soever it comes. 

But what forwardness soever I have to resign any opinion I have, or to 
recede from any thing I have writ upon the first evidence of any error in it ; 
yet this I must own, that I have not had the good luck to receive any light 
from those exceptions I have met with in print against any part of my 
book ; nor have, from any thing that has been urged against it, found rea- 
son to alter my sense in any of the points that have been questioned. 
Whether the subject I have in hand requires often more thought and atten- 
tion than cursory readers, at least such as are prepossessed, are willing to 
allow ; or whether any obscurity in my expression casts a cloud over it, and 
these notions are made difficult to others' apprehensions in my way oi 
treating them ; so it is, that my meaning, I find, is often mistaken, and I 



EPISTLE TO THE READER, 15 

have no5 the good luck to be every where rightly understood. There are 
bo many instances of this, that I think it justice to my reader and myself 
to conclude, that either my book is plainly enough written to be rightly 
understood by those who peruse it with that attention and indifferency, 
which every one who will give himself the pains to read, ought to employ 
in reading ; or else, that I have writ mine so obscurely, that it is in vain to 
go about to mend it. Whichever of these be the truth, it is myself only 
am affected thereby, and therefore I shall be far from troubling my reader 
with what I think might be said, in answer to those several objections I 
have met with to passages here and there of my book ; since I persuade 
myself, that he who thinks them of moment enough to be concerned whe- 
ther they are true or false, will be able to see, that what is said is either 
not well founded, or else not contrary to my doctrine, when I and my 
opposer came both to be well understood. 

If any, careful that none of their good thoughts should be lost, have pub- 
lished their censures of my Essay, with this honour done to it, that they 
will not suffer it to be an Essay; I leave it to the public to value the obli- 
gation they have to their critical pens, and shall not waste my reader's 
time in so idle or ill-natured an employment of mine, as to lessen the satis- 
faction any one has in himself, or gives to others in so hasty a confutation 
of what I have written. 

The booksellers preparing for the fourth edition of my Essay, gave me ' 
notice of it, that I might, if I had leisure, make any additions or alterations 
I should think fit. Whereupon I thought it convenient to advertise the 
reader, that besides several corrections I had made here and there, there 
was one alteration which it was necessary to mention, because it ran 
through the whole book, and is of consequence to be rightly understood. 
What I thereupon said was this : 

Clear and distinct ideas are terms, which, though familiar and frequent 
in men's mouths, I have reason to think every one, who uses, does not 
perfectly understand. And possibly it is but here and there one, who gives 
himself the trouble to consider them so far as to know what he himself or 
others precisely mean by them : I have therefore in most places chose to 
put determinate or determined, instead of clear and distinct, as more likely 
to direct men's thoughts to my meaning in this matter. By those denomi- 
nations, I mean some object in the mind, and consequently determined, i. e. 
such as it is there seen and perceived to be. This, I think, may fitly be 
called a determinate or determined idea, when such as it is at any time 
objectively in the mind, and so determined there, it is annexed, and without 
variation determined to a name or articulate sound, which is to be steadily 
the sign of that very same object of the mind or determinate idea. 

To explain this a little more particularly. By determinate, when applied 
to a simple idea, I mean that simple appearance which the mind has in its 
view, or perceives in itself, when that idea is said to be in it : by determi- 
nate, when applied to a complex idea, I mean such an one as consists of a 
determinate number of certain simple or less complex ideas, joined in such 
a proportion and situation, as the mind has before its view, and sees in itself, 
when that idea is present in it, or should be present in it, when a man gives 
a name to it : I say should be, because it is not every one, not perhaps any 
one, who is so careful of his language, as to use no word, till he views in his 
mind the precise determined idea, which he resolves to make it the sign of. 
The want of this is the cause of no small obscurity and confusion in men's 
thoughts and discourses. 

I know there are not words enough in any language to answer all the 
variety of ideas that enter into men's discourses and reasonings. But this 
hinders not, but that when any one uses any term, he may have in his mind 
a determined idea, which he makes it the sign of, and to which he should 
keep it steadily annexed, during that present discourse. Where he does 



16 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 

not, or cannot do this, he in vain pretends to clear or distinct ideas : it is 
plain his are not so ; and therefore there can be expected nothing but ob- 
scurity and confusion, where such terms are made use of, which have not 
such a precise determination. 

Upon this ground I have thought determined ideas a way of speaking 
less liable to mistakes, than clear and distinct ; and where men have got 
such determined ideas of all that they reason, inquire, or argue about, they 
will find a great part of their doubts and disputes at an end. The greatest 
part of the questions and controversies that perplex mankind, depending on 
the doubtful and uncertain use of words, or (which is the same) indeter- 
mined ideas, which they are made to stand for ; I have made choice of these 
terms to signify, 1. Some immediate object of the mind, which it perceives 
and has before it, distinct from the sound it uses as a sign of it. 2. That 
this idea, thus determined, i. e. which the mind has in itself, and knows 
and sees there, be determined without any change to that name, and that 
name determined to that precise idea. If men had such determined ideas 
in their inquiries and discourses, they would both discern how far their own 
inquiries and discourses went, and avoid the greatest part of the disputes 
and wranglings they have with others. 

Besides this, the bookseller will think it necessary I should advertise the 
reader, that there is an addition of two chapters wholly new ; the one of the 
association of ideas, the other of enthusiasm. These, with some other 
larger additions never before printed, he has engaged to print by themselves, 
after the same manner, and for the same purpose as was done when this 
Essay had the second impression. 

In the sixth edition, there is very little added or altered ; the greatest part 
of what is new is contained in the 21st chapter of the second book, which 
any one, if he thinks it worth while, may, with a Very little labour, tran- 
scribe into the margin of the former edition. 



CONTENTS 



ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



BOOK I. 



OF INNATE NOTIONS. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Introduction. 
Sect. 1. An inquiry into the under- 
standing, pleasant and useful. 

2. Design. 

3. Method. 

4. Useful to know the extent of our 
comprehension. 

5. Our capacity proportioned to our 
state and concerns, to discover 
things useful to us. 

6. Knowing the extent of our capa- 

cities will hinder us from useless 
curiosity, scepticism, and idle- 
ness. 

7. Occasion of this essay. 

8. What idea stands for. 

CHAPTER II. 

No innate speculative principles. 

1. The way shown how we come by 
any knowledge, sufficient to prove 

v it not innate. 

2. General assent, the great argu- 
ment. 

3. Universal consent proves nothing 
innate. 

4. What is, is; and it is impossible 
for the same thing to be, and not 
to be; not universally assented to. 

5. Not on the mind naturally im- 
printed, because not known to 
children, idiots, &c. 

6. 7. That men know them when 

they come to the use of reason, 

answered. 
8. If reason discovered them, that 

would not prove them innate. 
9 — 11. It is false that reason discovers 

them. 
12. The coming to the use of reason, 

not the time we come to know 

these maxims. 



13. By this they are not distinguished 
from other knowable truths. 

14. If coming to the use of reason 

were the time of their discovery, 
it would not prove them innate. 

15. 16. The steps by which the mind 

attains several truths. 

17. Assenting as soon as proposed and 
understood, proves them not in- 
nate. 

18. If such an assent be a mark of in- 

nate, then that one and two are 
equal to three; that sweetness, is 
not bitterness; and a thousand the 
like, must be innate. 

19. Such less general propositions 
known before these universal 
maxims. 

20. One and one equal to two, &c. 

not general nor useful, answered. 

21. These maxims not being known 

sometimes until proposed, proves 
them not innate. 

22. Implicitly known before proposing, 

signifies that the mind is capable 
of understanding them or else 
signifies nothing. 

23. The argument of assenting on first 
hearing is upon a false supposi- 
tion of no precedent teaching. 

24. Not innate, because not univer- 

sally assented to. 

25. These maxims not the first known. 

26. And so not innate. 

27. Not innate, because they appear 
least, where what is innate shows 
itself clearest. 

28. Recapitulation. 

CHAPTER III. 

JVo innate practical principles. 
1. No moral principles so clear and 



L8 



OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



so generally received as the fore- 
mentioned speculative maxims. 

2. Faith and justice not owned as 
principles by all men. 

3. Obj. Though men deny them in 
their practice, yet they admit 
them in their thoughts, answered. 

4. Moral rules need a proof, ergo, 

not innate. 

5. Instance in keeping compacts. 

6. Virtue generally approved, not 
because innate, but because pro- 
fitable. 

7. Men's actions convince us that 
the rule of virtue is not their in- 
ternal principle. 

8. Conscience no proof of any innate 
moral rule. 

9. Instances of enormities practised 

without remorse. 

10. Men have contrary practical prin- 
ciples. 

11 — 13. Whole nations reject several 
moral rules. 

14. Those who maintain innate prac- 
tical principles, tell us not what 
they are. 

15 — 19. Lord Herbert's innate princi- 
ples examined. 

20. Obj. Innate principles may be cor- 

rupted, answered. 

21. Contrary principles in the world. 
22 — 26. How men commonly come by 

their principles. 
27. Principles must be examined. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Other considerations about innate prin- 
ciples, both speculative and prac- 
tical. 

1. Principles not innate, unless their 

ideas be innate. 

2, 3. Ideas, especially those belong- 

ing to principles, not born with 
children. 
4, 5. Identity, an idea not innate. 
6. Whole and part, not innate ideas, 
i 7. Idea of worship not innate. 

8 — 11. Idea of God, not innate. 
12. Suitable to God's goodness, that 
all men should have an idea of 
him, therefore naturally imprint- 
ed by him, answered. 
13-16. Ideas of God various in differ- 
ent men. 

17. If the idea of God be not innate, 
no other can be supposed innate. 

18. Idea of substance not innate. 

19. No propositions can be innate, 
since no ideas are innate. 

20. No ideas are remembered, till af- 
ter they have been introduced. 

21. Principles not innate, because of 
little use, or little certainty. 
Difference of men's discoveries 
depends upon the different appli- 
cations of their faculties. 
Men must think and know for 
themselves. 

Whence the opinion of innate 
principles. 

25. Conclusion. 



22. 



23 



24. 



BOOK II. 
OF IDEAS 



CHAPTER I. 

Of ideas in general, and their original. 
Sect. 1. Idea is the object of thinking. 

2. All ideas come from sensation or 
reflection. 

3. The objects of sensation one 
source of ideas. 

4. The operations of our minds the 
other source of them. 

5. All our ideas are of the one or 
the other of these. 

6. Observable in children. 

7. Men are differently furnished with 
these, according to the different 
objects they converse with. 

8. Ideas of reflection later, because 
they need attention. 

9. The soul begins to have ideas 
when it begins to perceive. 



10. 



The soul thinks not always; for 
this wants proofs. 
It is not always conscious of it. 
If a sleeping man thinks without 
knowing it, the sleeping and wa- 
king man are two persons. 
Impossible to convince those that 
sleep without dreaming, that they 
think. 

That men dream without remem- 
bering it, in vain urged. 
Upon this hypothesis, the thoughts 
of a sleeping man ought to be 
most rational. 

On this hypothesis the soul must 
have ideas not derived from sen- 
sation or reflection, of which there 
is no appearance. 



CONTENTS. 



19 



17. If I think when I know it not, no- 
body else can know it. 

18. How knows any one the soul always 
thinks? For if it be not a self-evi- 
dent proposition, it needs proof. 

19. That a man should be busy in 
thinking, and yet not retain it the 
next moment, very improbable. 

20 — 23. No ideas but from sensation 
or reflection, evident, if we ob- 
serve children. 

24. The original of all our knowledge. 

25. In the reception of simple ideas the 
understanding is most of all passive. 

CHAPTER II. 

Of simple ideas . 

1. Uncompounded appearances. 

2, 3. The mind can neither make nor 
destroy them. 

CHAPTER III. 

Of ideas of one sense. 

1. As colours, of seeing; sounds, of 
hearing. 

2. Few simple ideas have names 

CHAPTER IV. 

Of solidity. 

1. We receive this idea from touch. 

2. Solidity fills space. 

3. Distinct from space. 

4. From hardness. 

5. On solidity depend impulse, re- 
sistance, and protrusion. 

6. What it is. 

CHAPTER V. 

Of simple ideas by more than one sense. 

CHAPTER VI. 

Of simple ideas of reflection. 

1. Simple ideas are the operations of 
the mind about its other ideas. 

2. The idea of perception, and idea 
of willing, we have from reflection. 

CHAPTER VII. 

Of simple ideas, both of sensation and 

reflection. 
1 — 6. Pleasure and pain. 

7. Existence and unity. 

8. Power. 

9. Succession. 

10. Simple ideas, the materials of all 
our knowledge. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Other considerations concerning simple 

ideas. 
1-6. Positive ideas from Drivative causes. 



7, 8. Ideas in the mind, qualities in bo- 
dies. 
9, 10. Primary and secondary quali- 
ties. 

11, 12. How primary qualities produce 
their ideas. 

13, 14. How secondary. 

15 — 23. Ideas of primary qualities, are 
resemblances; of secondary, not. 

24, 25. Reason of our mistake in this. 

26. Secondary qualities two-fold; first, 
immediately perceivable; secondly, 
mediately perceivable. 

CHAPTER IX. 

Of perception. 

1. It is the first simple idea of reflec- 
tion. 

2 — 4. Perception is only when the 
mind receives the impression. 

5, 6. Children, though they have ideas 
in the womb, have none innate. 

7. Which ideas first, is not evident. 
8 — 10. Ideas of sensation often changed 
by the judgment. 
11 — 14. Perception puts the difference 
between animals and inferior be- 
ings. 
15. Perception the inlet of knowledge. 

CHAPTER X. 

Of retention. 

1. Contemplation. 

2. Memory. 

3. Attention, repetition, pleasure, and 
pain, fix ideas. 

4. 5. Ideas fade in the memory. 

6. Constantly repeated ideas can 
scarce be lost. 

7. In remembering, the mind is often 
active. 

8, 9. Two defects in the memory, obli- 

vion and slowness. 
10. Brutes have memory. 



10, 

14. 
15. 



CHAPTER XL 

Of discerning, &c. 
No knowledge without it. 
Difference of wit and judgmes*. 
Clearness alone hinders confusion. 
Comparing. 

Brutes compare but imperfectly. 
Compounding. 
Brutes compound but little. 
Naming. 
Abstraction. 
11. Brutes abstract not. 
13. Ideots and madmen. 
Method. 

These are the beginnings of humaa 
knowledge. 



20 



OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



16. Appeal to experience. 
If. Dark room. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Of complex ideas. 

1. Made by the mind out of simple 
ones. 

2. Made voluntarily. 

3. Are either modes, substances, or 
relations. 

4. Modes. 

5. Simple and mixed modes. 

6. Substances single or collective. 

7. Relation. 

8. The abstrusest ideas from the two 
sources. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Of space and its simple modes. 

1. Simple modes. 

2. Idea of space. 

3. Space and extension. 

4. Immensity. 

5. 6. Figure. 
7—10. Place. 

i 11 — 14. Extension and body not the 
same. 

15. The definition of extension, or of 
space, does not explain it. 

16. Division of beings into bodies and 
spirits proves not body and space 
the same. 

17. 18. Substance, which we know not, 
no proof against space without 
body. 

19, 20. Substance and accidents of little 
use in philosophy. 

21. A vacuum beyond the utmost 
bounds of body. 

22. The power of annihilation proves 
a vacuum. 

23. Motion proves a vacuum. 

24. The ideas of space and body dis- 
tinct. 

25. 26. Extension, being inseparable 
from body, proves it not the same. 

27. Ideas of space and solidity dis- 
tinct. 

28. Men differ little in clear simple 
ideas. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Of duration and, its simple modes. 
1. Duration is fleeting extension. 
2 — 4. Its idea from reflection on the 

train of our ideas. 
5. The idea of duration applicable to 

things while we sleep. 
2-8. The idea of succession not from 
motion. 



9 — 11. The train of ideas has a cer- 
tain degree of quickness. 

12. This train, the measure of other 
successions. 

13 — 15. The mind cannot fix long on 
one invariable idea. 

16. Ideas, however made, include no 
sense of motion. 

17. Time is duration set out by mea 
sures. 

18. A good measure of tinv> must di 
vide its whole duration tmc equal 
periods. 

19. The revolutions of the sun and 
moon the properest measures of 
time. 

20. But not by their motion, but pe- 
riodical appearances. 

21. No two parts of duration can be 
certainly known to be equal. 

22. Time not the measure of motion. 

23. Minutes, hours, and years not ne- 
cessary measures of duration. 

24 — 26. Our measure of time appli-, 

cable to duration before time. 
27—30. Eternity. 



12. 



CHAPTER XV. 

duration and expansion considered 

together. 
Both capable of greater and less. 
Expansion not bounded by matter. 
Nor duration by motion. 
Why men more easily admit infi- 
nite duration than infinite expan- 
sion. 

Time to duration is as place to ex- 
pansion. 

Time and place are taken for so 
much of either as are set out by 
the existence and motion of bodies. 
Sometimes for so much of either 
as we design by measure taken 
from the bulk or motion of bodies. 
They belong to all beings. 
All the parts of extension are ex- 
tension; and all the parts of dura- 
tion are duration. 
Their parts inseparable. 
Duration is as a line, expansion as 
a solid. 

Duration has never two parts to- 
gether, expansion all together. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Of number . 

1. Number, the simplest and mos* 
universal idea. 

2. Its modes made by addition. 

3. Each mode distinct. 



CONTENTS. 



21 



4. Therefore demonstrations in num- 
bers the most precise. 

5, 6. Names necessary to numbers. 

7. Why children number not earlier. 

8. Number measures all measurables. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Of Infinity. 

1. Infinity, in its original intentions, 
attributed to space, duration, and 
number. 

2. The idea of finite easily got. 

3. How we come by the idea of infinity. 

4. Our idea of space boundless. 

5. And so of duration. 

6. Why other ideas are not capable of 
infinity. 

7. Difference between infinity of space 
and space infinite. 

8. We have no idea of infinite space. 

9. Number affords us the clearest idea 
of infinity. 

10, 11. Our different conception of the 
infinity of number, duration and 
expansion. 

12. Infinite divisibility. 

13, 14. No positive idea of infinity. 

15, 16. What is positive, what nega- 
tive, in our idea of infinite. 

16, 17. We have no positive idea of 

infinite duration. 
18. No positive idea of infinite space. 

20. Some think they have a positive 
idea of eternity, and not of infi- 
nite space. 

21. Supposed positive idea of infinity, 
cause of mistakes. 

22. All these ideas from sensation and 
reflection. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Of other simple modes. 
1, 2. Modes of motion. 
3. Modes of sounds. 
^%. Modes of colours. 

5. Modes of tastes and smells. 

6. Some simple modes have no names. 

7. Why some modes have, and others 
have not names. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Of the modes of thinking. 
1, 2. Sensation remembrance, contem- 
plation, &c. 

3. The various attention of the mind 
in thinking. 

4. Hence it is probable that thinking is 
the action, not essence of the soul. 

CHAPTER XX. 

Of modes of pleasure and pain. 



1. Pleasure and pain simple ideas. 

2. Good and evil, what. 

3. Our passions moved by good and 
evil. 

4. Love. 

5. Hatred. 

6. Desire. 

7. Joy. 

8. Sorrow. 

9. Hope. 

10. Fear. 

11. Despair. 

12. Anger. 

13. Envy. 

14. What passions all men have. 

15. 16. Pleasure and pain, what. 

17. Shame^ 

18. These instances do show how our 
ideas of the passions are got from 
sensation and reflection. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

Of poiver. *-—" "" 

1. This idea how got. 

2. Power active and passive. 

3. Power includes relation, w 

4. The clearest idea of active power 
had from spirit. 

5. Will and understanding two pow- 
ers. l - 

6. Faculties. 

7. Whence the ideas of liberty and 
necessity. 

8. Liberty, what. 

9. Supposes understanding and will. 

10. Belongs not to volition. 

11. Voluntary opposed to involuntary, 
not to necessary. 

12. Liberty, what. 

13. Necess 1 *", what. 

14-20. Liberty belongs not to the will. 

21. But to the agent or man. 

22-24. In respect of willing, a man is 
not free. 

25-27. The will determined by some- 
thing without it. 

28. Volition, what. 

29. What determines the will. 

30. Will and desire must not be con 
founded. 

31. Uneasiness determines the will. 

32. Desire is uneasiness. 

33. The uneasiness of desire deter- 
mines the will. 

34. This the spring of action. 

35. The greatest positive good deter- 
mines not the will, but uneasiness. 

36. Because the removal of uneasiness 
is the first step to happiness. 

37. Because uneasiness alone is pre- 
sent 



22 



OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



48. 



4?. 
50. 



2, 
5. 

54, 

56. 

57. 

58, 

60. 

61, 

63. 
64, 

65. 

67. 
68. 

69. 

70. 

71- 



Because all, who allow the joys of 
heaven possible, pursue them not. 
But a great uneasiness is never ne- 
glected. 

Desire accompanies all uneasiness. 
The most pressing uneasiness na- 
turally determines the will. 
All desire happiness. 
Happiness, what. 
What good is desired, what not. 
Why the greatest good is not al- 
ways desired. 

Why, not being desired, it moves 
not the will. 

Due consideration raises desire. 
The power to suspend the prose- 
cution of any desire, makes way for 
consideration. 

To be determined by our own 
judgment is no restraint to liberty. 
The freest agents are so determined. 
A constant determination to a pur- 
suit of happiness no abridgment of 
liberty. 

The necessity of pursuing true hap- 
piness the foundation of all liberty. 
The reason of it. 

Government -of our passions the 
right improvement of liberty. 
55. How men come to pursue dif- 
ferent courses. 

How men come to choose ill. 
First, from bodily pains. Second- 
ly, from wrong desires arising from 
wrong judgment. 

59. Our judgment of present good 
or evil always right. 
From a wrong judgment of what 
makes a necessary part of their 
happiness. 

62. A mora particular account of 
wrong judgments. 
In comparing present and future. 
65. Causes of this. 
In considering consequences of ac- 
tions. 

Causes of this. 

Wrong judgment of what is neces- 
sary to our happiness. 
We can change the agreeableness 
oi; disagreeableness in things. 
Preference of vice to virtue, a 
manifest wrong judgment. 
■73. Recapitulation. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

Of mixed modes. 
Mixed modes, what. 
Made by the mind. 
Sometimes got by the explication 
of their names. 



4. The name ties the parts of the mix- 
ed modes into one idea. 

5. The cause of making mixed modes. 

6. Why words in one language have 
none answering in another. 

7. And languages change. 

8. Mixed modes, where they exist. 

9. How we get the ideas of mixed 
modes. 

10. Motion, thinking, and power have 
been most modified. 

11. Several words seeming to signify 
action, signify but the effect. 

12. Mixed modes made also of othei 
ideas. 

CHAPTER XXIII 

Of the complex ideas of substances. 

1. Ideas of substances, how made. 

2. Our ideas of substances in general 

3. 6. Of the sorts of substances. 

4. No clear idea of substance in gene 
ral. 

5. As clear an idea of spirit as body. 

7. Powers a great part of our com- 
plex idea of substances. 

8. And why. 

9. Three sorts of ideas make our com- 
plex ones of substances. 

10. Powers make a great part of out 
complex ideas of substances. 

11. The now secondary qualities of 
bodies would disappear, if we could 
discover the primary ones of their 
minute parts. 

12. Our faculties of discovery suited to 
our state. 

13. Conjecture about spirits. 

14. Complex ideas of substances. 

15. Idea of spiritual substances as clear 
as of bodily substances. 

16. No idea of abstract substance. 

17. The cohesion of solid parts, and 
impulse, the primary ideas of body. 

18. Thinking and motivity the primary 
ideas of spirit. 

19-21. Spirits capable of motion. 

22. Idea of soul and body compared. 

23-27. Cohesion of solid parts in body, 
as hard to be conceived as thinking 
in a soul. 

28, 29. Communication of motion by 
impulse, or by thought, equally in- 
telligible. 

30. Ideas of body and spirit compared. 

31. The notion of spirit involves no 
more difficulty in it than that of 
body. 

32. We know nothing beyond our 
simple ideas. 

33-35. Idea of God. 



CONTENTS. 



23 



36. No ideas in our complex one of 
spirits, but those got from sensa- 
tion or reflection. 

17. Recapitulation. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

Of collective ideas of substances. 

1. One idea. 

2. Made by the power of composing 
in the mind. 

i S. All artificial things are collective 
ideas. 

CHAPTER XXV. 
Of relation. 

2. Relation, what. 

Relations, without correlative terms 
not easily perceived. 

3. Some seemingly absolute terms 
contain relations. 

4. Relation different from the things 
related. 

5. Change of relation may be without 
any change in the subject. 

6. Relation only betwixt two things. 

7. All things capable of relation. 

8. The ideas of relation clearer often, 
than of the subjects related. 

9. Relations all terminate in simple 
ideas. 

10. Terms leading the mind beyond 
the subjects denominated, are rela- 
tive. 

11. Conclusion. 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

Of cause and effect, and other relations. 

1. Whence their ideas got. 

2. Creation, generation, making al- 
teration. 

3. 4. Relations of time. 

5. Relations of place and extension. 

6. Absolute terms often stand for re- 
lations. 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

Of identity and diversity 

1 . Wherein identity consists. 

2. Identity of substances. 
Identity of modes. 

3. Principium individuationis. 

4. Identity of vegetables. 
• r >. Identity of animals. 

6. Identity of man. 

7. Identity suited to the idea. 

8. Same man. 

9. Personal identity. 

1 0. Consciousness makes personal iden- 
tity. 

It. Personal identity in change of sub- 
stances. 



12-15. Whether in the change of think- 
ing substances. 

16. Consciousness makes the same per- 
son. 

17. Self depends on consciousness. 

18. 20. Objects of reward and punish- 
ment. 

21, 22. Difference between identity of 

man and person. 
23-25. Consciousness alone makes self. 
26, 27. Person a forensic term. 

28. The difficulty from ill use of names. 

29. Continued existence makes iden- 
tity. 

CHAPTER XXVIH. 

Of other relations. 

1. Proportional. 

2. Natural. 

3. Instituted. 

4. Moral. 

5. Moral good and evil. 

6. Moral rules. 

7. Laws. 

8. Divine law, the measure of sin and 
duty. 

9. Civil law, the measure of crimes 
and innocence. 

10, 11. Philosophical law, the measure 
of virtue and vice. 

12. Its enforcements, commendation, 
and discredit. 

13. These three laws the rules of mo- 
ral good and evil. 

14. 15. Morality is tbe relation of ac- 
tions to these rules. 

16. The denominations of actions often 
mislead us. 

17. Relations innumerable. 

18. All relations terminate in simple 
ideas. 

19. We have ordinarily as clear (or 
clearer) notions of the relation, as 
of its foundation. 

20. The notion of the relation is 
the same, whether the rule any 
action is compared to be true or 
false. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

Of clear and distinct, obscure and con- 
fused ideas. 

1. Ideas, some clear and distinct, 
others obscure and confused. 

2. Clear and obscure, explained by 
sight. 

3. Causes of obscurity. 

4. Distinct and coafustd, what. 

5. Objection. 

6. Confusion of iieas w in ref»»»^Dce 
to their names. 



24 



OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



7. Defaults which make confusion. 
First, Complex ideas made up of 
too few simple ones. 

8. Secondly, Or its simple ones jum- 
bled disorderly together. 

9. Thirdly, Or are mutable or unde- 
termined. 

10. Confusion, without reference to 
names, hardly conceivable. 

11. Confusion concerns always two 
ideas. 

12. Causes of confusion. 

13. Complex ideas may be distinct in 
one part, and confused in another. 

14. This, if not heeded, causes confu- 
sion in our arguings. 

15. Instance in eternity. 

16. ■ Divisibility of matter. 

CHAPTER XXX. 

Of real and fantastical ideas. 

1. Real ideas are conformable to their 
archetypes. 

2. Simple ideas all real. 

3. Complex ideas are voluntary com- 
binations. 

4. Mixed modes, made of consistent 
ideas, are real. 

5. Ideas of substances are real, when 
they agree with the existence of 
things. 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

Of adequate and inadequate ideas. 

1. Adequate ideas are such as per- 
fectly represent their archetypes. 

2. Simple ideas all adequate. 

3. Modes are all adequate. 

4. 5. Modes, in reference to settled 

names, may be inadequate. 

6,7. Ideas of substances, as referred to 
real essences, not adequate. 

8-11. Ideas of substances, as collec- 
tions of their qualities, are all in- 
adequate. 

12. Simple ideas sjcrysrsi, and adequate. 

13. Ideas of substances are ix.Tu7ra., and 
inadequate. 

14. Ideas of modes and relations are 
archetypes, and cannot but be ade- 
quate. 

CHAPTER XXXIL 

Of true and false ideas. 

1. Truth and falsehood properly be- 
longs to propositions. 

2. Metaphysical truth contains a tacit 
proposition. 

3. No idea, as an appearance in the 
mind, true or false. 



4. Ideas referred to any thing, may 
be true or false. 

5. Other men's ideas, real existence, 
and supposed real essences, are 
what men usually refer their ideas 
to. 

6-8. The cause of such references. 

9. Simple ideas may be false in re- 
ference to others of the same name, 
but are least liable to be so. 

10. Ideas of mixed modes most liable 
to be false in this sense. 

11. Or at least to be thought false. 

12. And why. 

13. As referred to real existences, none 
of our ideas can be false, but those 
of substances. 

14. 16. First, Simple ideas in this sense 

not false, and why. 

15. Though one man's idea of blue 
should be different from another's. 

17. Secondly, Modes not false. 

18. Thirdly, Ideas of substances, -when 
false. 

19. Truth or falsehood always sup- 
poses affirmation or negation. 

20. Ideas in themselves neither true 
nor false. 

21. But are false, first, when judged 
agreeable to another man's idea, 
without being so. 

22. Secondly, when judged to agree to 
real existence, when they do not. 

23. Thirdly, when judged adequate 
without being so. 

24. Fourthly, when judged to represent 
the real essence. 

25. Ideas, when false. 

26. More properly to be called riglu 
or wrong. 

27. Conclusion. 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

Of the association of ideas. ^ 

1. Something unreasonable in most 
men. 

2. Not wholly from self-love. 

3. Nor from education. 

4. A degree of madness. 

5. From a wrong connexion of ideas, v 

6. This connexion how made, y 

7. 8. Some antipathies an effect of it. 
9. A great cause of errors. 

10 — 12. Instances. 

13. Why time cures some disorders in 

the mind, which reason cannot. 
14-16. Farther instances of the effects 

of the association of ideas. 

17. Its influence on intellectual habits 

18. Observable in different sects. 

19. Conclusion. 



CONTENTS. 



25 



BOOK III. 
OF WORDS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Of -words or language in general. 
•ect. 1. Man fitted to form articulate 

sounds. 
2. To make them signs of ideas. 
3,4. To make general signs. 

5. Words ultimately derived from 
such as signify sensible ideas. 

6. Distribution, 

CHAPTER II. 

Of the signification of -words. 

1. Words are sensible signs necessary 
for communication. 

2, 3. Words are the sensible signs of 
his ideas who uses them. 

4. Words often secretly referred, first, 
to the ideas in other men's minds. 

5. Secondly, to the reality of things. 

6. Words by use readily excite ideas. 

7. Words often used without signifi- 
cation. 

8. Their signification perfectly arbi- 
trary. 

CHAPTER III. 

Of general terms. 

1. The greatest part of words general. 

2. For every particular thing to have 
a name, is impossible. 

3. 4. And useless. 

5. What things have proper names. 
6 — 8. How general words are made. 

9. General natures are nothing but 
abstract ideas. 

10. Why the genus is ordinarily made 
use of in definitions. 

11. General and universal are crea- 
tures of the understanding. 

12. Abstract ideas are the essences of 
the genera and species. 

13. They are the workmanship of the 
understanding, but have their 
similitude in the foundation of 
things. 

14. Each distinct abstract idea is a dis- 
tinct essence. 

15. Real and nominal essence. 

16. Constant connexion between the 
name and nominal essence. 

17. Supposition, that species are dis- 
tinguished by their real essences, 
useless. 

18. Real and nominal essence the same 
in simple ideas and modes, differ- 
ent in substances. 



19. Essences ingenerable and incor- 
ruptible. 

20. Recapitulation. 

CHAPTER IV. 

Of the names of simple ideas. 

1. Names of simple ideas, modes, and 
substances, have each something 
peculiar. 

2. First, Names of simple ideas and 
substances, intimate real existence. 

3. Secondly, Names of simple ideas 
and modes signify always both real 
and nominal essence. 

4. Thirdly, Names of simple ideas un- 
definable. 

5. If all were definable, it would be a 
process in infinitum. 

6. What a definition is. 

7. Simple ideas, why undefinable. 
8,9. Instances, motion. 

10. Light. 

11. Simple ideas, why undefinable fur- 
ther explained. 

12. 13. The contrary showed in com- 
plex ideas by instances of a statue 
and rainbow. 

14. The names of complex ideas when 
to be made intelligible by words. 

15. Fourthly, Names of simple ideas 
least doubtful. 

16. Fifthly, Simple ideas have few 
ascents in linse prsedicamentali. 

17. Sixthly, Names of simple ideas 
stand for ideas not at all arbitrary. 

CHAPTER V. 

Of the names of mixed modes and rela- 
tions. 

1. They stand for abstract idea3 as 
other general names. . 

2. First, The ideas they stand for are 
made by the understanding. 

3. Secondly, Made arbitrarily, and 
without patterns. 

4. How this is done. 

5. Evidently arbitrary, in that the idea 
is often before the existence. 

6. Instances, murder, incest, stabbing. 

7. But still subservient to the end of 
language. 

8. Whereof the intranslatable words 
of divers languages are a proof. 

9. This shows species to be made for 
communication. 

10, 11. In mixed modes, it is the name 



28 



OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



that ties the combination together, 
and makes it a species. 

12. For the originals of mixed modes, 
we look no farther than the mind, 
which also shows them to be the 
workmanship of the understanding. 

13. Their being made by the under- 
standing without patterns, shows 
the reason why they are so com- 
pounded. 

14. Names of mixed modes stand al- 
ways for their real essences. 

15. Why their names are usually got 
before their ideas. 

16. Reason of my being so large on 
this subject. 



1. 

2. 

3. 

• 4- 
7, 

9 

10. 
11. 

.2. 
13. 
14- 
19. 

-32, 

23. 

24. 
25. 

25,' 

23. 

29 
30 



CHAPTER VI. 

Of the names of substances. 
The common names of substances 
stand for sorts. 

The essence of each sort is the ab- 
stract idea. 

The nominal and real essence dif- 
ferent. 

6. Nothing essential to individuals. 
8. The nominal essence bounds the 
species. 

Not the real essence which we 
know not. 

Not substantial forms, which we 
know less. 

That the nominal essence is that 
whereby we distinguish species, 
farther evident from spirits. 
Whereof there are probably num- 
berless species. 

The nominal essence that of the 
species, proved from water and ice. 
-18. Difficulties against a certain 
number of real essences. 
Our nominal essences of substan- 
ces, not perfect collections of pro- 
perties. 

But such a collection as our name 
stands for. 

Our abstract ideas are to us the 
measures of species. Instances in 
that of man. 

Species not distinguished by gene- 
ration. 

Not by substantial forms. 
The specific essences are made by 
the mitrd. 

.27. Therefore very various and un- 
certain. 

3ut not so ai'bitrary as mixed 
aot'es. 

"hough very imperfect. 
'Vhich yet serve for common con- 
frrse 



31. But make several essenees signified 
by the same name. 

32. The more general our ideas are* 
the more incomplete and partial 
they are. 

33. This all accommodated to the end 
of speech. 

34. Instance in cassiowary. 

35. Men make the species. Instance 
gold. 

36. Though nature makes the simili- 
tude. 

37. And continues it in the races of 
things. 

38. Each abstract idea is an essence. 

39. Genera and species are in order to 
naming. Instance watch. 

40. Species of artificial things less con- 
fused than natural. 

41. Artificial things of distinct species. 

42. Substances alone have proper 
names. 

43. Difficulty to treat of words Avith 
words. 

44. 45. Instance of mixed modes in 
kineah and niouph. 

46, 47. Instance of substances in zahab. 

48. Their ideas imperfect, and there- 
fore various. 

49. Therefoi'e to fix their species a 
real essence is supposed. 

50. Which supposition is of no use. 

51. Conclusion. 

CHAPTER Vn. 

Of particles. 

1. Particles connect parts or whole 
sentences together. 

2. In them consists the art of well 
speaking. 

3. 4. They show what relation the 
mind gives to its own thoughts. 

5. Instance in but. 

6. This matter but lightly touched 
here. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Of abstract and concrete terms. 

1. Abstract terms not predicable one 
of another, and why. 

2. They show the difference of our 
ideas. 

CHAPTER IX. 

Of the imperfection of -words. 

1. Words are used for recording and 
communicating our thoughts. 

2. Any words will serve for recording. 

3. Communication by words, civil or 
philosophical. 

4. The imperfection of words, is the 
doubtfulness of their signification 



CONTENTS. 



2? 



5. Causes of their imperfection. 

6. The names of mixed modes doubt- 
ful: first, because the ideas they 
stand for are so complex. 

7. Secondly, Because they have no 
standards. 

8. Propriety not a sufficient remedy. 

9. The way of learning these names 
contributes also to their doubtful- 
ness. 

10. Hence unavoidable obscurity in an- 
cient authors. 

il. Names of substances of doubtful 
signification. 

12. Names of substances referred. — 
First, To real essences that cannot 
be known. 

13, 14. Secondly, To coexisting quali- 
ties, which are known but im- 
perfectly. 

15. With this imperfection they may 
serve for civil, but not well for 
philosophical use. 

16. Instance — Liquor of nerves. 

17. Instance— Gold. 

18. The names of simple ideas the least 

doubtful. 

19. And next to them simple modes. 
'20. The most doubtful, are the names 

of very compounded mixed modes 
and substances. 

21. Why this imperfection charged 
upon words. 

22, 23. This should teach us modera- 
tion in imposing our own sense of 
old authors. 

CHAPTER X. 

Of the abuse ofivords. 

1. Abuse of words. 

2, 3. First, Words without any, or 
without clear ideas. 

4. Occasioned by learning names be- 
foi'e the ideas they belong to. 

5. Secondly, Unsteady application of 
them. 

6. Thirdly, Affected obscurity by 
wrong application. 

7. Logic and dispute have much con- 
tributed to it. 

8. Calling it subtilty 

9. This learning very little benefits 
society. 

10. But destroys the instruments of 
knowledge and communication. 

11. As useful as to confound the sound 
of the letters. 

12. This art has perplexed religion and 
justice. 

13. And ought not to pass for learning. 

14. Fourthly, Taking them for things. 



15. Instance in matter. 

16. This makes errors lasting. 

17. Fifthly, Setting them for what they 
cannot signify. 

18. V . g. Putting them for the real 3s- 
sences of substances. 

19. Hence we think every change of 
our idea in substances, not to 
change the species. 

20. The cause of this abuse, a supposi- 
tion of nature's working always re- 
gularly. 

21. This abuse contains two false sup- 
positions. 

22. Sixthly, A supposition that words 
have a certain and evident signifi- 
cation. 

23. The ends of language. First, To 
convey our ideas. 

24. Secondly, To do it with quickness. 

25. Thirdly, Therewith to convey the 
knowledge of things. 

26-31. How men's words fail in all these. 

32. How in substances. 

33. How in modes and relations. 

34. Seventhly, Figurative speech alsc 
an abuse of language. 

CHAPTER XI. 

Of the remedies of the foregoing imper- 
fections and abuses. 

1. They are worth seeking. 

2. Are not easy. 

3. But yet necessary to philosophy. 

4. Misuse of words, the cause of great 
errors. 

5. Obstinacy. 

6. And wrangling. 

7. Instance — Bat and bird. 

8. First remedy, To use no word with- 
out an idea. 

9. Secondly, To have distinct ideas 
annexed to them in modes. 

10. And distinct and conformable in 
substances. 

11. Thirdly, Propriety. 

12. Fourthly, To make known their 
meaning. 

13. And that in three ways. 

14. First, In simple ideas by synony- 
mous terms or showing. 

15. Secondly, In mixed modes by de- 
finition. 

16. Morality capable of demonstration. 

17. Definitions can make moral dis- 
courses clear. 

18. And is the only way. 

19. Thirdly, In substances by showing 
and defining. 

20. 21. Ideas of the leading qualities ot 
substances, are best got by showing 



28 



OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



22. The ideas of their powers hest by 
definition. 

23. A reflection on the knowledge of 
spirits. 

24. Ideas also of substances must be 
conformable to things. 



25. Not easy to be made so. 

26. Fifthly, By constancy in their sig- 
nification. 

27. When the variation is to be ex- 
plained. 



BOOK'IV. 
OF KNOWLEDGE AND OPINION. 



CHAPTER I. 

Of knowledge in g eneral. 
Sect. 1. Our knowledge conversant 
about our ideas. 
2. Knowledge is the perception of the 
agreement or disagreement of two 
ideas. 
S. This agreement fourfold. 

4. First, Of identity or diversity. 

5. Secondly, Relation. 

6. Thirdly, Of coexistence. 

7. Fourthly, Of real existence. 

8. Knowledge actual or habitual. 

9. Habitual knowledge twofold. 

CHAPTER II. 

Of the degrees of oiir knowledge. 

1. Intuitive. 

2. Demonstrative. 

3. Depends on proofs. 

4. But not so easy. 

5. Not without precedent doubt. 

0. Not so clear. 

7. Each step must have intuitive evi- 
dence. 

8. Hence the mistake ex prsecognitis 
et prgeconcessis. 

9. Demonstration not limited to quan- 
tity. 

10 — 13. Why it has been so thought. 

14. Sensitive knowledge of particular 
existence. 

15. Knowledge not always clear, where 
the ideas are so. 

CHAPTER III. 

Of the extent of human knowledge. 

1 . First, No farther than we have ideas. 

2. Secondly, No farther than we can 
perceive their agreement or disa- 
greement. 

3. Thirdly, Intuitive knowledge ex- 
tends itself not to all the relations 
of all our ideas. 

4. Fourthly, Not demonstrative know- 
ledge. 

5. Fifthly, Sensitive knowledge nar- 
rower than either. 

6. Sixthly, Our knowledge therefore 
narrower than our ideas. 



7. How far our knowledge reaches. 

8. First, Our knowledge of identity 
and diversity, as far as our ideas. 

9. Secondly, Of coexistence a very 
little way, 

10. Because the connexion between 
most simple ideas is unknown. 

11. Especially of secondary qualities. 

12-14. And farther, because all connex- 
ion between any secondary and pri- 
mary qualities is undiscoverable. 

15. Of repugnancy to coexist larger. 

16. Of the coexistence of powers a very 
little way. 

17. Of spirits yet narrower. 

18. Thirdly, Of other relations, it is not 
easy to say how far. Morality ca- 
pable of demonstration. 

19. Two things have made moral ideas 
thought incapable of demonstra- 
tion. Their complexedness and 
want of sensible representations. 

20. Remedies of those difficulties.' 

21. Fourthly, Of real existence, we 
have an intuitive knowledge of our 
own, demonstrative of God's, sen- 
sitive of some few other things. 

22. Our ignorance great. 

23. First, One cause of it want of ideas, 
either such as we have no concep- 
tion of, or such as particularly we 
have not. 

24. Because of their remoteness, or, 

25. Because of their minuteness. 

26. Hence no science of bodies. 

27. Much less of spirits. 

28. Secondly, Want of a discoverable 
connexion between ideas we have. 

29. Instances. 

30. Thirdly, Want of tracing our ideas. 

31. Extent in respect of universality. 

CHAPTER IV. 

Of the reality of our knowledge. 

1. Objection, knowledge placed i:i 
ideas, may be all bare vision. 

2, 3. Answer, not so, where ideas 
agree with things. 

4. As, first, all simple ideas do. 



CONTENTS. 



5. Secondly, All complex ideas, ex- 
cept of substances. 

6 Hence the reality of mathematical 
knowledge. 

7. And of moral. 

8. Existence not required to make it 
real. 

9. Nor will it he less true or certain, 
because moral ideas are of our own 
making and naming. 

10. Misnaming disturbs not the cer- 
tainty of the knowledge. 

11- Ideas of substances have their ar- 
chetypes without us. 

12 So far as they agree witli those, so 
far our knowledge concerning them 
is real. 

1.3. In our inquiries about substances, 
we must consider ideas, and not 
confine our thoughts to names or 
species supposed set out by names. 

14, 15. Objection against a changeling 
being something between man and 
beast, answered. 

16. Monsters. 

17. Words and species. 

18. Recapitulation. 

CHAPTER V. 

Of truth, in general. 

1. What truth is. 

2. A right joining or separating of 
signs; i. e. ideas or words. 

.'J. Which makes mental or verbal pro- 
positions. 

4. Mental propositions are very hard 
to be treated of. 

5. Being nothing but joining, or se- 
parating ideas without words. 

0. When mental propositions contain 
real truth, and when verbal. 

7. Objection against verbal truth, that 
thus it may be all chimerical. 

8. Answered, Real truth is about ideas 
agreeing to things. 

9. Falsehood is the joining of names 
otherwise than their ideas agree. 

10. General propositions to be treated 
of more at large. 

1 1. Moral and metaphysical truth. 

CHAPTER VI. 

Of universal propositions, their truth 
and certainty, 

1. Treating of words, necessary to 
knowledge. 

2. General truths, hardly to be under- 
stood, but in verbal propositions. 

3. Certainty two-fold, of truth and of 
knowledge. 

4. No proposition can be known to be 



true, where the essence of each spe 
cies mentioned is not known. 

5. This more particularly concerns 
substances. 

6. The truth of few universal propo- 
sitions concerning substances, is to 
be known. 

7. Because coexistence of ideas in few 
cases is to be known. 

8. 9. Instance in gold. 

10. A.s far as any such coexistence can 
be known, so far universal proposi- 
tions may be certain. But this will 
go but a little way, because, 

11, 12. The qualities which make our 
complex ideas of substances depend 
mostly on external, remote, and 
unperceived causes. 

13. Judgment may reach farther, but 
that is not knowledge. 

14. What is requisite for our know- 
ledge of substances. 

15. Whilst our ideas of substances con- 
tain not their real constitutions, we 
can make but few general certain 
propositions concerning them. 

16. Wherein lies the general certainty 
of propositions. 

CHAPTER VII. 

Of maxims. 

1. They are self-evident 

2. Wherein that self-evidence consists. 

3. Self-evidence not peculiar to re- 
ceived axioms. 

4. First, As to identity and diversity, 
all propositions are equally self- 
evident. 

5. Secondly, In coexistence Ave have 
few self-evident propositions. 

6. Thirdly, In other relations we may 
have. 

7. Fourthly, Concerning real exist- 
ence, we have none. 

8. These axioms do not much influ- 
our other knowledge. 

9. Because they are not the truths 
the first known. 

10. Because on them the other parts of 
our knowledge do not depend. 

11. What use these general maxims 
have. 

12. Maxims, if care be not taken in 
the use of words, may prove con- 
tradictions. 

13. Instance in vacuum. 

14. They prove not the existence ot 
things without us. 

15. Their application dangerous about 
complex ideas. 

16 — 18. Instance in man. 



so 



OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



19. Little use of these maxims in proofs 
where we have clear and distinct 
ideas. 

20. Their use dangerous, where our 
ideas are confused. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Of trifling propositions . 
Some propositions bring no in- 
crease to our knowledge. 
3. As, first, identical propositions. 
Secondly, When a part of any com- 
plex idea is predicated of the whole. 
As part of the definition of the 
term defined. 

Inst?nce — Man and palfry. 
For this teaches but the significa- 
tion of words. 
But no real knowledge. 
General propositions concerning 
substances are ofteu trifling. 
And why. 

Thirdly, Using words variously is 
trifling with them. 
Marks of verbal propositions. First, 
Predicated in abstract. 
Secondly, A part of the definition 
predicated of any term. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Of our knowledge of existence. 
General certain propositions con- 
cern not existence. 
A threefold knowledge of existence. 
Our knowledge of our own exist- 
ence is intuitive. 

CHAPTER X. 

Of the existence of a God. 
We are capable of knowing cer- 
tainly that there is a God. 
Man knows that he himself is. 
He knows also, that nothing can- 
not produce a being, therefore 
something eternal. 
That eternal Being must be most 
powerful. 

And most knowing. 
And therefore God. 
Our idea of a most perfect being, 
not the sole proof of a God. 
Something from eternity. 
Two sorts of beings, cogitative and 
incogitative. 

Incogitative being cannot produce 
a cogitative. 

12. Therefore, there has been an 
eternal wisdom. 
Whether material or no. 
Not material, First, Because every 
particle of matter is not cogitative. 



15. Secondly, One particle alone of 
matter cannot be cogitative. 

16. Thirdly, A system of incogitative 
matter cannot be cogitative. 

17. Whether in motion or at rest. 

18. 19. Matter not coeternal with an 
eternal mind. 

CHAPTER XL 

Of the knowledge of the existence of 
other things. 

1. Is to be had only by sensation. 

2. Instance — Whiteness of this paper. 

3. This, though not so certain as 
demonstration, yet may be called 
knowledge, and proves the exist- 
ence of things without us. 

4. First, Because we cannot have them 
but by the inlets of the senses. 

5. Secondly, Because an idea from ac- 
tual sensation, and another from me- 
mory, are very distinct perceptions. 

6. Thirdly, Pleasure or pain, which 
accompanies actual sensation, ac- 
companies not the returning of those 
ideas without the external objects. 

7. Fourthly, Our senses assist one 
another's testimony of the exist- 
ence of outward things. 

8. This certainty is as great as our 
condition needs. 

9. But reaches no farther than actual 
sensation. 

10. Folly to expect demonstration in 
every thing. 

11. Past existence is known by memory. 

12. The existence of spirits not know- 
able. 

13. Particular propositions concerning 
existence are knowable. 

14. And general propositions concern- 
ing abstract ideas. 

CHAPTER XII. 

Of the improvement of our knowledge. 
1. Knowledge is not from maxims. 
2: The occasion of that opinion. 

3. But from the comparing clear and 
distinct ideas. 

4. Dangerous to build upon precarious 
principles. 

5. This no certain way to truth. 

6. But to compare clear complete ideas 
under steady names. 

7. The true method of advancing 
knowledge is by considering our 
abstract ideas. 

8. By which morality also may be 
made clearer. 

9. But knowledge of bodies is to be 
improved only by experience. 



CONTENTS. 



SI 



10. This ma j procure us convenience, 
not science. 

11. We are fitted for moral knowledge 
and natural improvements. 

12. But must beware of hypotheses and 
wrong principles. 

13 The true use of hypotheses, 
14. Clear and distinct ideas with set- 
tled names, and the finding of those 
which show their agreement or 
disagreement, are the ways to en- 
large our knowledge. 
5. Mathematics an instance of it. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Some other considerations concerning 
our knowledge. 

1. Our knowledge partly necessary, 
partly voluntary. 

2. The application voluntary; but we 
know as things are, not as we please. 

3. Instances in number, and in natural 
religion. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Of judgment. 

1. Our knowledge being short, we 
want something else. 

2. What use to be made of this twi- 
light estate. 

S. Judgment supplies the want of 
knowledge. 

4. Judgment is the presuming things 
to be so, without perceiving it. 

CHAPTER XV. 

Of probability. 

1. Probability is the appearance of 
agreement upon fallible proofs. 

2. It is to supply the want of know- 
ledge. * 

3. Being that which makes us pre- 
sume things to be true, before we 
know them to be so. 

4. The grounds of probability are two; 
conformity with our own expe- 
rience, or the testimony of others' 
experience. 

5. In this all the agreements, pro and 
con, ought to be examined before 
we come to a judgment. 

6. They being capable of great variety. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Of the degrees of assent. 

1. Our assent ought to be regulated 
by the grounds of probability. 

2. These cannot be always all actually 

nview, and then we must content 
ourselves with the remembrance 
that we once saw ground for such 
a degree of assent. 



3. The ill consequence of this, if our 
former judgment were not rightly 
made. 

4. The right use of it is mutual chari- 
ty and forbearance 

5. Probability is either of matter of 
fact or speculation. 

6. The concurrent experience of all 
other men with ours, produces as- 
surance approaching to knowledge 

7. Unquestionable testimony and ex- 
perience for the most part produce 
confidence. 

8. Fair testimony, and the nature of 
the thing indifferent, produces also 
confident belief. 

9. Experience and testimonies clash- 
ing, infinitely vary the degrees ot 
probability. 

10. Traditional testimonies, the farther 
removed, the less their proof. 

11. Yet history is of great use. 

12. In things which sense cannot dis- 
cover, analogy is the great rule of 
probability. 

13. One case where contrary experi- 
ence lessens not the testimony. 

14. The bare testimony of revelation 
is the highest certainty. 

CHAPTER XVII 

Of reason. 

1. Various significations of the word 
reason. 

2. Wherein reasoning consists. 

3. Its four parts. 

4. Syllogism not the great instrument 
of reason. 

5. Helps little in demonstration, less 
in probability. 

6. Serves not to increase our know- 
ledge, but fence with it. 

7. Other helps should be sought 

8. We reason about particulars. 

9. First, Reason fails us for want of 
ideas. 

10. Secondly, Because of obscure and 
imperfect ideas. 

11. Thirdly, For want of intermediate 
ideas. 

12. Fourthly, Because of wrong prin- 
ciples. 

13. Fifthly, Because of doubtful terms. 

14. Our highest degree of knowledge 
is intuitive without reasoning. 

15. The next is demonstration by rea- 
soning. 

16. To supply the narrowness of this, 
we have nothing but judgment upon 
probable i-easoning. 

17. Intuition, demonstration, judgment. 



32 



OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



1 8. Consequences of words, and conse- 
quences of ideas. 

19. Four sorts of arguments: first, Ad 
ve~ecundiam. 

20. Secondly, Ad ignorantiam. 

21. Thirdly, Ad hominem. 
11. Fourthly, Ad judicium. 

13. Above, contrary, and according to 

reason. 
24. Reason and faith not opposite. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Of faith and reason, and their distinct 
provinces. 
1. Necessary to know their bounda- 
ries. 
1. Faith and reason what, as contra- 
distinguished. 

3. No new simple idea can be con- 
veyed by traditional revelation. 

4. Traditional revelation may make 
us know propositions knowable also 
by reason, but not with the same 
certainty that reason doth. 

5. Revelation cannot be admitted 
against the clear evidence of reason. 

6. Traditional revelation much less. 

7. Things above reason. 

8. Or not contrary to reason, if reveal- 
ed, are matter of faith. 

9. Revelation, in matters where rea- 
son cannot judge, or but probably, 
ought to be hearkened to. 

10. In matters where reason can afford 
certain knowledge, that is to be 
hearkened to. 

11. If the boundaries be set between 
faith and reason, no enthusiasm, or 
extravagancy in religion, can be 
contradicted. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Of enthusiasm. 

1. Love of truth necessary. 

2. A forwardness to dictate, whence. 

3. Force of enthusiasm. 

4. Reason and revelation. 

5. Rise of enthusiasm. 

6. 7. Enthusiasm. 



8, 9. Enthusiasm mistaken for seeing 
and feeling. 

10. Enthusiasm how to be discovered. 

11. Enthusiasm fails of evidence that 
the proposition is from God. 

12. Firmness of persuasion no proof 
that any proposition is from God. 

13. Light in the mind, what. 

14. Revelation must be judged of by 
reason. 

15. 16. Belief no proof of revelation. 

CHAPTER XX. 

Of wrong- assent, or error. 

1. Causes of error. 

2. First, Want of proofs. 

3. Obj. What shall become of those 
who want them, answered. 

4. People hindered from inquiry. 

5. Secondly, Want of skill to use 
them. 

6. Thirdly, Want of will to use them. 

7. Fourthly, Wrong measures of pro- 
bability: whereof. 

8 — 10. First, Doubtful propositions 
taken from principles. 

11. Secondly, Received hypotheses. 

12. Thirdly, Predominant passions. 

13. The means of evading probabili- 
ties, 1st, Supposed fallacy. 

14. 2dly, Supposed arguments for the 
contrary. 

15. What probabilities determine the 
assent. 

16. Wnere it is in our power to sus- 
pend it. 

17. Fourthly, Authority. 

18. Men not in so many errors as la 
imagined. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

Of the division of the sciences. 

1. Three sorts. 

2. First, Physica. 

3. Secondly, Practica. 

4. Thirdly, ^M/unceriKii. 

5. This is the first division of the ob- 
jects of knowledge. 



hi 



The Word Idea comprehends . 



AN ANALYSIS OF MR LOCKL 

the Object of the Understanding, b. 1, c. 1. { 8. 



2. 


Th 


steps to kno 


vl. 


.1. 








4. 

5. 


li,: 


of (God, not 


,., 


6. 


I>,i 






r. 


Self-evidence ool 


s. 



9. Assent not truly universal 



in prineiples.-j £™ 



10. Men think not always, b. 2. o. 1. 

To suppose the contrary woi 
And having thoughts thai c i 

I'j'oliiiltli- tlint iliinkiug in:»y I 
Impossible tn il'!< rniiiiL- «li« 

11. Whence the opinion of innate idei 



c 3. $ 4. 
c. 1. § 12. 



2, The secondary qn 



Ri-u-mi. 



i ; - ^ rrora sigm anu touun. c. -t. 

< ™M?,' I Bxi8t '"" °' 1 eX ' ra - C ' 8 ' § ' 
I Motion, ? Fl . om sig , lt alK , eo „ c |, c 5 , 



p. Contemplation^ 
eraory. ^ 2. < Tl 



>,n.l ' 



I' 



4 Habit. % 6. 
_ Cause of Ib^Xm!'*, I 

. Cleat- ideas necessary to it. c. 11. § 3. 
. Wit lies in assembling idens. § 2. 
,.;,. Judgment in separating tliem. ibid. 
- . CI. Hence ideas of relations, o. 11. % 4. 

. Comparing. £„ Bd(j , s , u|1 i ml , cr r ce tly to brutes, ibid. 



5-Comp< ding S Henoei(IeMO t nuD 

or enlarging. C 



e genus and specit 



• use. c. G. e, 30. 



' , .„ S Nominal, c. 6. §§ 
3. c. 3. % 15. c. 6. § 98. I ReaI % 7 

"1. Arbitrary signs, b. 3. 0. S. $ 8. 

2. Signs uf ideas, mil ol ihing-j. ibid. § 3. 

CJlecording ideas, e. 0. § 2. 

3. Its use. £ c ,„„,„„iiH-:iliii S tin-in. ibid. $ 3. 



. Language 



Its several abuses. 


c. 10. 


Their remedies, c 








Conversant about 




1. General terms, c. 


■(«..«*. «0. 7. 


2. Names of simpl 


>,'! ", " :i1 ' Nls l u '"" 


ideas, c. 4. 


^l,™s, ,,,,,,1,,,-nl of an,'. 


I Names of mixed 


::—:—:/ 


modes, o. 5. 


iDoublfiil, why. c. 0. § 






4. Names ol sub- 


< Helen- $ Heal essence 
i ed to iCocxisliugqi 


stances, o. 6. 




(Canned ideas togi-liu-i 


5. Particles, e. 7. 


jsbow Uicie relations. § 



6. Abstract terms, o. 8. Not prodicable of , 



6. Abstract terms, c. S. Not prod 
\j. Concrete, ibid. 
J n. Power of acting. ? Man free. S 21. 

fi. Pleasure necessarily desirable, b. 1. o. S. $S.h. * 



Sututiox and 
Rktlkctkix 
jointly. 




e from body. ibid. 

CNot from motion, o. 14. h 6. 
• Succession. \ From „,„ „.„•„, of our lAeis . i 



S DOCTRINE Of IDEAS IN HIS ESSAY ON HUM 

III. Ideas considered with regard to their Objects. 



nded appearances, as 



7- Not fictions of our 1 
8. Positive ideas from 



3. § 2. b. 4. c. 4. % 4. though they do nob: 

c. 8. $$ 1, G. A probable reason of it. ibi 
indefinite, b. 2. o. 16. § 8. 
Mot actually infinite, c. 17. % 8. 
imperfect for want of names, e. 16. § 5. 
idea from sight or touch, e. 5. 



/-Its idea from sight or touch, e. 5. 
Synonymous to extension, c. 13. 

j Vacuum or m-alion of body. ibid. - -. 

•Si- e M»i,«n„ 1 ;„.i™ ; ,.,iM S . 

I A relative idea. c. 26. § 3. 

L.KelaflYe to the situation of bodies, c. 13. % 



other ideas, ibid. § 
4. Infinity. -^ Applied to number, space, 



.$3. 

e. 14. % 6. 
,e train of our ideas. % 2. 
w, not perceived, why. §§7, 
ngs, c. 17, % 1. . 
7. § 1. Why not applicable 



ml-, colours, tastes, &c. c. 18. 



voluntary combination of ideas. ftuT}"*** - 28 ' 
c. 22. § 2. b. 3. c. i.,3. ] ? Absolute or 

L 5 Relative, ibid. 



2. Preserved by na 

3. feist only in tin 

4. Ail adequate, II 

5. Beal if made" of i 

6. Acquired by < 



$9. 



Use of words, ibid, and b. S. c. 5. § 15. 
"1. Collection of qualities existing together, c. 23. § 9. 

2. Applied differltly to God, spirit, and body. c. 13. $ IS. 

3. Ranked acorn-ding' to their nominal essences, b. 3. c. 3. $ 2. &c 

5. Material and ilmaterial, their ideas equally clear, c. IS. § 15. c. 23. § 5. 

6. Their ideas infiequate. c. 31. % 8. 
Jl. Collective iiU-ssol'thcm, what. c. 24. 

1. Betwixt two tilings at least, c. 25. §§ 1, 6. 

2. All things capnble of relation, ibid. $ 7. c. 28. § 17. 

3. Terminate in simple ideas, c. 28. % 18. c. 25. $ 9. 

4. Often clearer lit,,, the things related, c. 28. % 19. e. 25. § 8. Absolute terms 

often stand for them. c. 25. § 3. c. 20. §§ 4, 6. Often without correlative terms, 
c. 25 ? '_'. All terms relative whirl, lead the mind hcvoiid the subject denom- 




AN UNDERSTANDING. 

IV. Ideas considered with 



1. What meant by I 

2. Causes of obsciir 



Ji-'Si 
<Lw« 

So, witli regard to their names. § 
J Some ^le-to rensnm I,. *_,. 



2. So » nh regar, 



U. Distinc 

fl. All sim 



p. Want of a sufficient number of simple ideas in l 



32. $$ 2, 3, 20. 



4 


Subsl; 


ices 


when not true. § 


18. 


5 


Ideas may 


e so either with 


cspect 


: | 


Simpl 


ide 


s. c. 31. « 2, 12 


I 


2 


Mode 
Itclali 


H 


b.d li ' 


*Adcc 




Mode 


"may 


always. §* 6, 10. 
be with respect 


(,...,„ 



f Conversi 

l'rop.i 



V. Of Knowledge, Reason, Faith, Judg,i 

1. Mental, b. 1. c. 5. §$ 3, 5. 

5. Moral, caiiahle of demonstration, o. 8, 
L6. Maxii 






. Ideas, as to their fl. Ide, nil) or div.-r-ity. c. I. <j 1. c. 3. § 8. c. 7. 4 4. 
agreement, or 2. Itelaliou. c. 1. % 5. c. 3. § IS. c. 7. $ 6. 

disagreement, •< 3. Coexistence, c. I. § 6. c. 3. § 9. c. 7 $ 5. 

in' L 1.4. Real existence, c. 1. § 7. c. 7. % 7. < Of God. o. 10. ' by 



,-,l„i,„,gi,,l,v^J. 1),-,, 



3. Wa, 


I „l it 


aused 


by 




„r a , 

— ,,;,,, 

riiv couipiiri 


i,,g and 


'ib-'i's 


§5 3, c 


!'lu"c?'3 


% 30. 


U. The 








t- 


Experience. 


% 9. 




























• ^ 11 












„ A v.»i JjriLj In 


lothi ses 


? 1 








r 1. Its 


several 


sense 


. c 


1- 


5 1. 
















-»y "in'B" ■ ........ ...-,-.. 

3y arguments ad (^; : 2 : -')c. .7.,. 9. 

U ,ium. J 

fS c. 18. §2. 

C , , - J Knowledge, c. is. 5 3. 

i Distinguished from < Ki,ll,.i-iasio. c. 19. vid. association, under 



.. Supplies the want of know ledge, c. 14. § 3. 

2. Conversant about probabilities. § 4. and c. 15. ^ once nm.g l..ii^ ^'^'^^-^^ ^ lfc 

3. Regulates the degrees of assent c. 16. 

ri't-onf, c. 20. § 2. 
A.1U mistakes oceasioner- J Ability | 5. 

Ll'i-qiii- measures or rules of probability. § 7 



i 



OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 

BOOK I. 

ON INNATE NOTIONS. 

CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

Sect. 1. An inquiry into the understanding, pleasant and useful.— 
Since it is the understanding that sets man above the rest of sensible 
beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over 
them ; it is certainly a subject, even from its nobleness, worth our labour to 
inquire into. The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and 
perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and 
pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own object. But whatever 
be the difficulties that lie in the way of this inquiry, whatever it be that 
keeps us so much in the dark to ourselves , sure I am, that all the light we 
can let in upon our own minds, all the acquaintance we can make with our 
own understandings, will not only be very pleasant, but bring us great ad- 
vantage, in directing our thoughts in the search of other things. 

Sect. 2. Design. — This, therefore, being my purpose, to inquire into 
the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together with the 
grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent; I shall not at present 
meddle with the physical consideration of the mind, or trouble myself to 
examine wherein its essence consists, or by what motions of our spirits, 
or alterations of our bodies, we come to have any sensation by our organs, 
or any ideas in our understandings ; and whether those ideas do, in their 
formation, any, or all of them, depend on matter or no : these are specu- 
lations, which, however curious and entertaining, I shall decline, as lying 
out of my way, in the design I am now upon. It shall suffice to my present 
purpose, to consider the discerning faculties of a man, as they are employ- 
ed about the objects which they have to do with : and I shall imagine I have 
not wholly misemployed myself in the thoughts I shall have on this occa- 
sion, if, in this historical, plain method, I can give any account of the ways 
whereby our understandings come to attain those notions of things we 
have, and can set down any measures of the certainty of our knowledge, 
or the grounds of those persuasions, which are to be found amongst men, so 
various, different, and wholly contradictory ; and yet asserted somewhere 
or other with such assurance and confidence, that he that shall take a 
view of the opinions of mankind, observe their opposition, and at the same 
time consider the fondness and devotion wherewith they are embraced, the 
resolution and eagerness wherewith they are maintained, may perhaps have 
reason to suspect, that either there is no such thing as truth at all, or thai 
mankind hath no sufficient means to attain a certain knowledge of it. 
E 



34 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Bookl. 

Sect. 3. Method. — It is, therefore, worth while to search out the bounds 
between opinion and knowledge; and examine by what measures, in 
things, whereof we have no certain knowledge, we ought to regulate our 
assent, and moderate our persuasions. In order whereunto, I shall pursue 
this following method. 

First, I shall inquire into the original of those ideas, notions, or whatever 
else you please to call them, which a man observes, and is conscious to 
himself he has in his mind; and the ways whereby the understanding 
comes to be furnished with them. 

Secondly, I shall endeavour to show what knowledge the understanding 
hath by those ideas; and the certainty, evidence, and extent of it. 

Thirdly, I shall make some inquiry into the nature and grounds of faith 
or opinion ; whereby I mean that assent which we give to any proposition 
as true, of whose truth yet we have no certain knowledge : and here we 
shall have occasion to examine the reasons and degrees of assent. 

Sect. 4. Useful to know the extent of our comprehension. — If, by thia 
inquiry into the nature of the understanding, I can discover the powers 
thereof, how far they reach, to what things they are in any degree propor- 
tionate, and where they fail us ; I suppose it may be of use to prevail with 
the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceed- 
ing its comprehension ; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether ; 
and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things, which, upon examina- 
tion, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities. We should not 
then, perhaps, be so forward, out of an affectation of a universal knowk dge, 
to raise questions, and perplex ourselves and others with disputes about 
things to which our understandings are not suited, and of which we can- 
not frame in our minds any clear or distinct perceptions, or whereof (as it 
has, perhaps, too often happened) we have not any notions at all. If we 
can find out how far the understanding can extend its views, how far it has 
faculties to attain certainty, and in what cases it can only judge and guess, 
we may learn to content ourselves with what is attainable by us in this 
state. 

Sect. 5. Our capacity suited to our state and concerns. — For, though 
the comprehension of our understandings comes exceeding short of the 
vast extent of things, yet we shall have cause enough to magnify the boun- 
tiful Author of our being, for that proportion and degree of knowledge he 
Aas bestowed on us, so far above all the rest of the inhabitants of this our 
mansion. Men have reason to be well satisfied with what God hath 
thought fit for them, since he has given them (as St. Peter says) o-aivT* 
is-^c fa>»v Kctl 6u<riCti*v, whatsoever is necessary for the conveniences of life, 
and information of virtue ; and has put within the reach of their discovery the 
comfortable provision for this life, and the way that leads to a better. 
How short soever their knowledge may come of an universal or perfect 
comprehension of whatsoever is, it yet secures their great concernments, 
that they have light enough to lead them to the knowledge of their Maker, 
and the sight of their own duties. Men may find matter sufficient to busy 
their heads, and employ their hands with variety, delight, and satisfaction , 
if they will not boldly quarrel with their own constitution, and throw away 
the blessings their hands are filled with, because they are not big enough 
to grasp every thing. We shall not have much reason to complain of tho 
narrowness of our minds, if we will but employ them about what may 
be of use to us : for of that they are very capable : and it will be an unpar 
donable, as well as childish peevishness, if we undervalue the advantages 
of our knowledge, and neglect to improve it to the ends for which it was 
given us, because there are some things that are set out of the reach of it. 
It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant, who would not at- 
tend his business by candlelight, to plead that he had not broad sunshine. 
The candle that is set up in us, shines bright enough for all our purposes 



Ch. I. INTRODUCTION. 85 

The discoveries we can make with this, ought to satisfy us: and we shall 
tien use our understanding right, when we entertain all objects in that 
way and proportion that they are suited to our faculties, and upon those 
grounds they are capable of being proposed to us; and not peremptorily or 
intemperately require demonstration, and demand certainty, where proba- 
bility only is to be had, and which is sufficient to govern all our concern- 
ments. If we will disbelieve every thing, because we cannot certainly 
know all things, we shall do much- what as wisely as he, who would not 
use his legs, but sit still and perish, because he had no wings to fly. 

Sect. 6. Knowledge of our capacity a cure of scepticism and idleness. — 
When we know our own strength, we shall the better know what to un- 
dertake with hopes of success ; and when we have well surveyed the pow- 
ers of our own minds, and made some estimate what we may expect from 
them, we shall not be inclined either to sit still, and not set our thoughts 
on work at all, in despair of knowing any thing; or, on the other side, ques- 
tion every thing, and disclaim all knowledge, because some things are not 
to be understood. It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of 
his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean. It 
is well he knows that it is long enough to reach the bottom, at such places 
as are necessary to direct his voyage, and caution him against running 
upon shoals that may ruin him. Our business here is not to know all things, 
but those which concern our conduct. If we can find out those measures 
whereby a rational creature, put in that state in which man is in, in this world, 
may and ought to govern his opinions, and actions depending thereon, we 
need not to be troubled that some other things escape our knowledge. 

Sect. 7. Occasion of this essay. — This was that which gave the first rise 
to this essay concerning the understanding. For I thought that the first 
step towards satisfying several inquiries the mind of man was very apt to 
run into, was to take a survey of our own understanding, examine our 
own powers, and see to what things they were adapted. Till that was 
done, I suspected we began at the wrong end, and in vain sought for satis- 
faction in a quiet and sure possession of truths that most concerned us, 
whilst we let loose our thoughts into the vast ocean of being; as if all that 
boundless extent were the natural and unbounded possession of our under- 
standings, wherein there was nothing exempt from its decisions, or that 
escaped its comprehension. Thus men, extending their inquiries beyond 
their capacites, and letting their thoughts wander into those depths where 
they can find no sure footing, it is no wonder that they raise questions, 
and multiply disputes, which, never coming to any clear resolution, are 
proper only to continue and increase their doubts, and to confirm them at 
last in perfect scepticism. Whereas, were the capacities of our understand- 
ings well considered, the extent of our knowledge once discovered, and the 
horizon found, which sets the bounds between the enlightened and dark 
parts of things, between what is and what is not comprehensible by us; 
men would, perhaps, with less scruple acquiesce in the avowed ignorance of 
the one, and employ their thoughts and discourse with more advantage and 
satisfaction in the other. 

Sect. 8. What idea stands for. — Thus much I thought necessary to say 
concerning the occasion of this inquiry into human understanding. But, 
before I proceed on to what I have thought on this subject, I must here in 
the entrance beg pardon of my reader for the frequent use of the word "idea," 
which he will find in the following treatise. It being that term which, I 
think, serves best to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understand- 
ing when a man thinks ; I have used it to express whatever is meant by 
phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed 
about in thinking; and I could not avoid frequently using it(l). 

(I) This modest apology of our author could not procure him the free use 
of the word idea: but great offence has been taken at it, and it has been censured 



36 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 1. 

I presume it will be easily granted me, that there are such ideas in men's 
minds; every one is conscious of them in himself, and men's words and ac- 
tions will satisfy him that they are in others. 

Our first inquiry then shall be, how they come into the mind. 

as of dangerous consequence: to which you may see what he answers. "The 
world," saith the bishop of Worcester,* "hath been strangely amused with ideas 
of late, and we have been told, that strange things might be done by the help of 
ideas; and yet these ideas, at last, come to be only common notions of things, 
which we must make use of in our reasoning. You (*. e. the author of the 
Essay concerning Human Understanding-) say in that chapter about the exis- 
tence of God, you thought it most proper to express yourself in the most usual 
and familiar way, by common words and expressions. I would you had done so 
quite through your book; for then you had never given that occasion to the ene- 
mies of our faith, to take up your new way of ideas, as an effectual battery (as 
they imagined) against the mysteries of the Christian faith. But you might have 
enjoyed the satisfaction of your ideas long enough before I had taken notice of 
them, unless I had found them employed about doing mischief." 

To which our author repliesf, It is plain, that that which your lordship appre- 
hends, in my book, may be of dangerous consequence to the article which your 
lordship has endeavoured to defend, is my introducing new terms; and that 
which your lordship instances in, is that of ideas. And the reason your lord- 
ship gives in every of these places, why your lordship has such an apprehension 
of ideas, that they may be of dangerous consequence to that article of faith which 
your lordship has endeavoured to defend, is because they have been applied to 
such purposes. And I might (your lordship says) have enjoyed the satisfaction 
of my ideas long enough before you had taken notice of them, unless your lord- 
ship had found them employed in doing mischief. Which, at last, as I humbly 
conceive, amounts to thus much, and no more, viz: That your lordship fears 
ideas, i. e. the term ideas, may, some time or other, prove of very dangerous 
consequence to what your lordship has endeavoured to defend, because they 
have been made use of in arguing against it. For I am sure your lordship does 
not mean, that you apprehend the things signified by ideas, may be of dangerous 
consequence to the article of faith your lordship endeavours to defend, because 
they have been made use of against it: for (besides that your lordship mentions 
terms) that would be to expect that those who oppose that ai-ticle, should op- 
pose it without any thoughts; for the things signified by ideas, are nothing but 
the immediate objects of our minds in thinking: so that unless any one can op- 
pose the article your lordship defends, without thinking on something, he must 
use the things signified by ideas; for he that thinks, must have some immediate 
object of his mind in thinking, i. e. must have ideas. 

But whether it be the name, or the thing; ideas in sound, or ideas in significa- 
tion; that your lordship apprehends may be of dangerous consequence to that ar- 
ticle of faith -which your lordship endeavours to defend; it seems to me, I will 
not say a new -way of reasoning (for that belongs to me), but were it not your 
lordship's, I should think it a very extraordinary way of reasoning, to write 
against a book, wherein your lordship acknowledges they are not used to bad 
purposes, nor employed to do mischief, only because you find that ideas are, 
by those who oppose your lordship, employed to do mischief; and so apprehend 
they may he of dangerous consequence to the article your lordship has en- 
gaged in the defence of. For whether ideas as terms, or ideas as the immediate 
objects of the mind signified by those terms, may be, in your lordship's appre- 
hension, of dangerous consequence to that article ; I do not see how your lord- 
ship's writing against the notions of ideas, as stated in my book, will at all hinder 
your opposers/rora employing them in doing mischief, as before. 

However, be that as it will, so it is, that your lordship apprehends these ne\a 
terms, these ideas, -with -which the -world hath of late been so strangely amused, 

* Answer to Mr Locke's First Letter. 

+ Iu his Second Letter to the Bishop of Worcester 



Ch. 1. INTRODUCTION. 37 

(though at last they come to be only common notions of things, as your lordship 
owns,) may be of dangarous consequence to that article. 

My lord, if any, in answer to your lordship's sermons, and in other pamphlets, 
wherein your lordship complains they have talked so much of ideas, have been 
troublesome to your lordship with that term, it is not strange that your lordship 
should be tired with that sound: but how natural soever it be to our weak con- 
stitutions to be offended with any sound wherewith an importunate din hath been 
made about our ears; yet, my k»rd, I know your lordship has a better opinion of 
the articles of our faith, than to think any of them can be overturned, or so much 
as shaken, with a breath formed into any sound or term whatsoever. 

Names are but the arbitrary marks of conceptions; and so they be sufficiently 
appropriated to them in their use, I know no other difference any of them have 
in particular, but as they are of easy or difficult pronunciation, and of a more or 
less pleasant sound; and what particular antipathies there may be in men to some 
of them, upon that account, it is not easy to be foreseen. This, I am sure, no term 
whatsoever in itself, bears one more than another, any opposition to truth of any 
kind; they are only propositions that do or can oppose the truth of any article or 
doctrine; and thus no term is privileged from being set in opposition to truth. 

There is no word to be found, which may not be brought into a proposition, 
wherein the most sacred and most evident truths may be opposed; but that is not 
a fault in the term, but him that uses it. And therefore I cannot easily persuade 
myself (whatever your lordship hath said in the heat of your concern) that you 
have bestowed so much pains upon my book, because the word idea is so much 
used there. For though -upon my saying, in my chapter about the existence 
of God, 'that I scarce used the word idea in that chapter,' your lordship 
wishes that / had done so quite through my book; yet I must rather look upon 
that asa compliment to me, wherein your lordship wished that my book had been 
all through suited to vulgar readers, not used to that and the like terms, than 
that your lordship has such an apprehension of the word idea; or that there is 
any such harm in the use of it, instead of the word notion (with which your lord- 
ship seems to take it to agree in signification,) that your lordship would think it 
worth your while to spend any part of your valuable time and thoughts about my 
book, for having the word idea so often in it; for this would be to make your 
lordship to write only against an impropriety of speech. I own to your lord- 
ship, it is a great, condescension in your lordship to have done it, if that word 
have such a share in what your lordship has writ against my book, as some 
expressions would persuade one; and I would, for the satisfaction of your lord- 
ship, change the term of idea for a better, if your lordship, or any one, could 
help me to it; for, that notion will not so well stand for every immediate object 
of the mind in thinking, as idea does, I have (as I guess) somewhere given 
a reason in my book, by showing that the term notion is more peculiarly apprr 
priated to a certain sort of those objects, which I call mixed modes: and I think 
it would not sound altogether so well, to say, the notion of red, and the notion of 
a horse; as the idea of red, and the idea of a horse. But if any one thinks it will, 
I contend not; for I have no fondness for, nor any antipathy to, any particular 
articulate sounds; nor do I think there is any spell or fascination in any of them. 

But be the word idea proper or improper, I do not see how it is the better or 
the worse, because ill men have made use of it, or because it has been made use 
of to bad purposes; for if that be a reason to condemn, or lay it by, We must lay 
by the terms scripture, reason, perception, distinct, clear, &c. Nay, the name 
\f God himself will not escape; for I do not think any one of these, or any other 
term, can be produced, which hath not been made use of by such men, and to 
such purposes. And, therefore, if the Unitarians, in their late pamphlets, have 
talked very much of and strangely amused the -world with ideas, I cannot believe 
your lordship will think that word one jot the worst, or the more dan, us, 
because they use it; any more than, for their use of them, you will think reason 
or scripture terms ill or dangerous. And therefore what your lordship says, \\s' 
I might have enjoyed the satisfaction of my ideas long enough before your h 
had taken notice of them, unless you had found them employed in doing mi ej\ 
will, I presume, when your lordship has considered again of this matter, prevail 
with your lordship, to let me er/joy still the satisfaction J take in my ideas, i. e. 



38 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 1, 

as much satisfaction as I can take in so small a matter, as is the using of a proper 
term, notwithstanding it should be employed by others in doing mischief. 

For, my lord, if I should leave it wholly out of my book and substitute the 
word notion every where in the room of it, and every body else should do so too, 
(tl ough your lordship does not, I suppose, suspect that I have the vanity to think 
they would follow my example) my book would, it seems, be the more to your 
J;rdship's liking; but I do not see how this would one jot abate the mischief 
your lordship complains of. For the Unitarian^ might as much employ notions 
r»s they do now ideas to do mischief; unless they are such fools to think they can 
conjure with this notable word idea, and that the force of what they say lies in 
llie sound, and not in the signification of their terms. 

This I am sure of, that the truths of the Christian religion can be no more 
cattered by one word than another; nor can they be beaten down or endangered 
l>y any sound whatsoever. And I am apt to flatter myself, that your lordship is 
satisfied that there is no harm in the wovd ideas, because you say, you should not 
have taken any notice of my ideas, if the enemies of our faith had not taken up 
my new way of ideas, as an effectual battery against the mysteries of the Chris- 
tian faith. In which place, by new way of ideas, nothing, I think, can be con- 
strued to be meant, but my expressing myself by that of ideas; and not by other 
more common words and of ancienter standing in the English language. 

As to the objection of the author's way by ideas being a new ivay, he thus an- 
swers: my new -way by ideas, or my -way by ideas, which often occurs in your 
lordship's letter, is, I confess, a very large and doubtful expression; and may, in 
the full latitude, comprehend my whole essay; because treating in it of the un- 
derstanding, which is nothing but the faculty of thinking, I could not well treat 
of that faculty of the mind, which consists in thinking, without considering the 
immediate objects of the mind in thinking, which I call ideas: and therefore, in 
treating of the understanding, 1 guess it will not be thought strange, that the 
greatest part of my book has been taken up in considering what these objects of 
the mind, in thinking, are; whence they come; what use the mind makes of them, 
m its several ways of thinking; and what are the outward marks Avhereby it sig- 
nifies them to others, or records them for its own use. And this, in short, is 
my ivay by ideas, that which your lordship calls my new -way by ideas; which, 
my lord, if it be new, it is but a new history of an old thing. For 1 think it will 
not be doubted, that men always performed the actions of thinking, reasoning, be- 
lieving, and knowing, just after the same manner that they do now ; though whether 
the same account has heretofore been given of the way how they performed 
these actions, or wherein they consisted, I do not know. Where I as well read 
as your lordship, I should have been safe from that gentle reprimand of your 
lordships for thinking my way of ideas new , for want of looking into other men's 
thoughts, which appear in their books. 

Your lordship's words, as an acknowledgement of your instructions in the case, 
and as a warning to others, who will be so bold adventurers as to spin anything 
barely out of their own thoughts, I shall set down at large. And they run thus: 
" Whether you took this way of ideas from the modern philosopher mention- 
ed by you, is not at all material; but I intended no reflection upon you in it 
(for that you mean, by my commending you as a scholar of so great a master.) 
I never meant to take from you the honour of your OAvn inventions: and 1 do 
believe you when you say, That you wrote from your own thoughts, and the 
ideas you had there. But many things may seem new to one, that converses 
only with his own thoughts, which really are not so; as he may find, when he 
looks into the thoughts of other men, which appear in their books. And, there- 
fore, although I have a just esteem for the invention of such, who can spin vo- 
lumes barely out of their own thoughts, yet I am apt to think they would oblige 
the world more, if, after they have thought so much themselves, they would 
examine what thoughts others have had before them, concerning the same things; 
that so those may not be thought their own inventions, which are common to 
themselves and others. If a man should try all the magnetical experiments himself, 
and publish them as his own thoughts, he might take himself to be the inventor 
of them; but he that examines and compares them with what Gilbert and others 



Ch. 1. INTRODUCTION. 39 

have done before him, will not diminish the praise of his diligence, but may- 
wish he had compared his thoughts with other men's; by which the world would 
receive greater advantage, although he had lost the honour of being an original." 

To alleviate my fault herein, I agree with your lordship, that many things may 
seem kew to one that converses only -with his own thoughts, -which really are not 
so: but I must crave leave to suggest to your lordship, that if, in the spinning of 
them out of his own thoughts, they seem new to him, he is certainly the inven- 
tor of them; and they may as justly be thought his own invention, as any one's; 
and he is as certainly the inventor of them, as any one who thought on them be- 
fore him: the distinction of invention, or not invention, lying not in thinking first, 
or not first, but in borrowing, or not borrowing, our thoughts from another: and 
he to whom, spinning them out of his own thoughts, they seem new, could not 
certainly borrow them from another. So he truly invented printing in Europe, 
who, without any communication with the Chinese, spun it out of his own thoughts; 
though it was never so true, that the Chinese had the use of printing, nay of 
printing in the very same way among them, many ages before him. So that he 
that spins any thing out of his own thoughts, that seems new to him, cannot cease 
to think it his own invention, should he examine ever so far: -what thoughu 
others have had before him, concerning the same thing, and should find, by ex- 
amining, that they had the same thoughts too. 

But what great obligation this -would be to the world, or weighty cause of turn- 
ing over and looking into books, I confess I do not see. The great end to me, 
in conversing with my own or other men's thoughts, in matters of speculation, 
is to find truth, without being much concerned whether my own spinning of il 
out of mine, or their spinning of it out of their own thoughts, helps me to it. 
And how little I affect the honour of an original, may be seen at that place of my 
book, where, if any where, that itch of vain glory was likeliest to have shown 
itself, had I been so overrun with it as to need a cure: it is where I speak of 
certainty, in these following words, taken notice of by your lordship, in another 
place: "I think I have shown wherein it is that certainty, real certainty consists; 
which, whatever it was to others, was, I confess, to me, heretofore, one of those 
desiderata which I found great want of." 

Here, my lord, however new this seemed to me, (and the more so because 
possibly I had in vain hunted for it in the books of others) yet I spoke of it as 
new, only to myself; leaving others in the undisturbed possession of what, either 
by invention, or reading, was theirs before; without assuming to myself any other 
honour, but that of my own ignorance, until that time, if others before had shown 
wherein certainty lay. And yet, my lord, if I had, upon this occasion, been for- 
ward to assume to myself the honour of an original, I think I had been pretty- 
safe in it; since I should have had your lordship for my guarantee and vindicator 
in that point, who are pleased to call it new, and, as such, to write against it. 

And truly, my lord, in this respect, my book has had very unlucky stars, since 
it hath had the misfortune to displease your lordship, with many things in it, for 
their novelty; as, new way of reasoning, new hypothesis about reason, new sort 
of certainty, new terms, new way of ideas, new method of certainty, &c. And 
yet, in other places, your lordship seems to think it worthy in me of your lord- 
ship's reflection, for saying but what others have said before; as where I say, 
*'In the different make of men's tempers, and application of their thoughts, some 
arguments prevail more on one, and some on another, for the confirmation of the 
same truth." Your lordship asks, " What is this different from what all men of 
understanding have said .?'.' Again, I take it, your lordship meant not these words 
for a commendation of my book, where you say, but if no more be meant by 
" The simple ideas that come in by sensation, or reflection, and their being the 
foundation of our knowledge, "but that our notions of things come in, either from 
our senses, or the exercise of our minds,- as there is nothing extraordinary in the 
discovery, so your lordship is far enough from opposing that, wherein you think 
all mankind are agreed. 

And again, Put what need all this great noise about ideas and certainty, true 
and real certainty by ideas, if, after all, it comes only to this, that our ideas only 
represent to us such things, from whence we bring arguments to prove the truth 
of things? 



<0 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. BookI. 

But the -world hath been strangely amused -with ideas of late,' and we have been 
told, that strange things might be done by the help of ideas; and yet these ideas, at 
last, come to be only common notions of things, ivhich we must make use of in our 
reasoning. And to the like purpose in other places. 

Whether, therefore, at last, your lordship will resolve that it is new or no, 
or more faulty by its being new, must be left to your lordship. This I find by 
it, that my book cannot avoid being condemned on the one side or the other; nor 
do I see a possibility to help it. If there be readers that like only new thoughts; 
or, on the other side, others that can bear nothing but what can be justified by 
;eceived authorities in print; I must desire them to make themselves amends in 
that part which they like, for the displeasure they receive in the other; but if 
any should be so exact, as to find fault with both, truly I know not well what to 
say to them. The case is a plain case; the book is all over naught, and there is 
not a sentence in it, that is not, either for its antiquity or novelty, to be con- 
demned; and so there is a short end of it. From your lordship, indeed, in par- 
ticular, I can hope for something better; for your lordship thinks the general 
design of it so good, that this, I flatter myself, would prevail on your lordship to 
preserve it from the fire. 

But as to the way, your lordship thinks, I should have taken to prevent the 
having it thought my invention, when it was common to me with others, it unluck- 
ily so fell out, in the subject of my Essay of Human Understanding, that I 
could not look into the thoughts of other men to inform myself: for my design 
being, as well as I could, to copy nature, and to give an account of the opera- 
tions of the mind in thinking, I could look into nobody's understanding but my 
own, to see how it wrought; nor have a prospect into other men's minds, to 
view their thoughts there, and observe what steps and motions they took, and 
by what gradations they proceeded in their acquainting themselves with truth, 
and their advance in knowledge: what we find of their thoughts in books, is but 
the result of this, and not the progress and working of their minds, in coming 
to the opinions or conclusions they set down and published. 

All, therefore, that I can say of my book is, that it is a copy of my own mind, 
in its several ways of operation: and all that I can say for the publishing of itis, 
that I think the intellectual faculties are made, and operate alike in most men; 
and that some, that I showed it to before I published it, liked it so well, that 1 
was confirmed in that opinion. And, therefore, if it should happen that it should 
not be so, but that some men should have ways of thinking, reasoning, or arriv- 
ing at certainty, different from others, and above those that I find my mind to use 
and acquiesce in, I do not see of what use my book can be to them. I can only 
make it my humble request, in my own name, and in the name of those that are 
of my size, who find their minds work, reason, and know in the same low way 
that mine does, that those men of a more happy genius would show us the way 
of their nobler flights; and particularly would discover to us their shorter or 
surer way to certainty, than by ideas, and the observing their agreement Or 
disagreement. 

Your lordship adds, Hut now it seems, nothing is intelligible but what suits with 
the new way of ideas. My lord, the new way of ideas, and the old way of speak- 
ing intelligibly*, was always and ever will be the same; and if I may take the 
liberty to declare my sense of it, herein it consists; 1. That a man use no words, 
but such as he makes the sign of certain determined objects of his mind in 
thinking, which he can make known to another. 2. Next, That he use the 
same word steadily for the sign of the same immediate object of his mind in 
thinking. 3. That he join those words together in propositions, according to 
the grammatical rules of that language he speaks in. 4. That he unites those 
sentences into a coherent discourse. Thus, and thus only, I humbly conceive, 
any one may preserve himself from the confines and suspicion of jargon, whether 
he pleases to call those immediate objects of his mind, which his words do, or 
should stand for, ideas or no. 

* Mr Locke's Third Letter to the Bishop of Worcester. 



Ch. 2. NO INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MLND. 11 



CHAPTER II. 

NO INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MIND. 

Sect. 1. The way shown how we come by any knowledge, sufficient tc 
prove it not innate. — It is an established opinion among some men, that 
there are in the understanding certain innate principles ; some primary no- 
tions; HLoivol) hvot*t, characters as it were, stamped upon the mind of man, 
which the soul receives in its very first being, and brings into the world 
with it. It would be sufficient to convince unprejudiced readers of the false- 
ness of this supposition, if I should only show (as I hope I shalMn the 
following parts of this discourse) how men, barely by the use of their nat- 
ural faculties, may attain to all the knowledge they have, without the help of 
any innate impressions ; and may arrive at certainty, without any such ori- 
ginal notions or principles. For I imagine any one will easily grant, that 
it would be impertinent to suppose the ideas of colour innate in a creature, 
to whom God hath given sight and a power to receive them by the eyes, 
from external objects : and no less unreasonable would it be to attribute se- 
veral truths to the impressions of nature, and innate characters, when we 
may observe in ourselves faculties fit to attain as easy and certain know- 
ledge of them, as if they were originally imprinted on the mind. 

But because a man is not permitted, without censure, to follow his own 
thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the 
common road, I shall set down the reasons that made me doubt of the truth 
of that opinion, as an excuse for my mistake, if I be in one ; which I leave to 
be considered by those, who, with me, dispose themselves to embrace truth, 
wherever they find it. 

Sect. 2. General assent, the great argument. — There is nothing more 
commonly taken for granted, than that there are certain principles, both 
speculative and practical (for they speak of both) universally agreed upon 
by all mankind ; which, therefore, they argue, must needs be constant im- 
pressions which the souls of men receive in their first beings, and which 
they bring into the world with them, as necessarily and really as they do 
any of their inherent faculties. 

Sect. 3. Universal consent proves nothing innate. — This argument, 
drawn from universal consent, has this misfortune in it, that if it were true, 
in matter of fact, that there were certain truths wherein all mankind agreed,, 
it would not prove them innate, if there can be any other way shown how 
men may come to that universal agreement in the tilings they do consent 
in; which I presume may be done. 

Sect. 4. " What is, is," and " it is impossible for the same thing to be, 
and not to be," not universally assented to. — But, which is worse, this ar- 
gument of universal consent, which is made use of to prove innate princi- 
ples, seems to me a demonstration that there are none such; because there 
are none to which all mankind give a universal assent. I shall begin with 
the speculative, and instance in those magnified principles of demonstration, 
4 * whatsoever is, is ;" and, " it is impossible for the same thing to be, and 
not to be;" which, of all others, I think have the most allowed title to in- 
nate. These have so settled a reputation of maxims universally received, 
that it will no doubt be thought strange, if any one should seem to question 
it. But yet I take liberty to say, that these propositions are so far from 
having a universal assent, that there are a great part of mankind to whom 
they are not so much as known. 
F 



42 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 1. 

Sect. 5. Not on the mind naturally imprinted, because not known to 
children, ideots, c$-c. — For, first, it is evident, that all children and ideots 
have not the least apprehension or thought of them ; and the want of that is 
enough to destroy that universal assent, which must needs be the neces- 
sary concomitant of all innate truths ; it seeming to me near a contradiction 
to say, that there are truths imprinted on the soul, which it perceives or 
understands not; imprinting, if it signify any thing, being nothing else but, 
the making certain truths to be perceived. For, to imprint any thing on 
the mind, without the mind's perceiving it, seems to me hardly intelligible. 
If, therefore, children and ideots have souls, have minds, with those impres- 
sions upon them, they must unavoidably perceive them, and necessarily 
know and assent to these truths ; which, since they do not, it is evident 
that there are no such impressions : for if they are not notions naturally 
imprinted, how can they be innate? and if they are notions imprinted, how 
can they be unknown? ' To say a notion is imprinted on the mind, and yet 
at the same time to say that the mind is ignorant of it, and never yet 
took notice of it, is to make this impression nothing. No proposition can 
be said to be in the mind, which it never yet knew, which it was never yet 
conscious of: for if any one may, then, by the same reason, all propositions 
that are true, and the mind is capable of ever assenting to, may be said to 
be in tl^p mind, and to be imprinted: since, if any one can be said to be in 
the mind, which it never yet knew, it must be only because it is capable 
of knowing it; and so the mind is of all truths it ever shall know. Nay, 
thus truths may be imprinted on the mind which it never did, nor ever shall 
know ; for a man may live long, and die at last in ignorance of many truths, 
which his mind was capable of knowing, and that with certainty. So that, 
if the capacity of knowing be the natural impression contended for, all the 
truths a man ever comes to know, will, by this account, be every one of 
them innate ; and this great point will amount to no more, but only to a 
very improper way of speaking : which, whilst it pretends to assert the 
contrary, says nothing different from those who deny innate principles; 
for nobody, I think, ever denied that the mind was capable of knowing 
several truths. The capacity, they say, is innate; the knowledge, ac- 
quired. But then, to what end such contest for certain innate max- 
ims? If truths can be imprinted on the understanding without being per- 
ceived, I can see no difference there can be between any truths the mind 
is capable of knowing, in respect of their original : they must all be innate, 
or all adventitious : in vain shall a man go about to distinguish them. He, 
therefore, that talks of innate notions in the understanding, cannot (if he 
intend thereby any distinct sort of truths) mean such truths to be in the 
understanding, as it never perceived, and is yet wholly ignorant of: for if 
these words (to be in the understanding) have any propriety, they signify 
to be understood : so that, to be in the understanding, and not to be un- 
derstood — to be in the mind, and never to be perceived — is all one as to 
say, any thing is, and is not, in the mind or understanding. If therefore 
these two propositions, " whatsoever is, is," and, " it is impossible for the 
same thing to be, and not to be," are by nature imprinted, children cannot 
be ignorant of them; infants, and all that have souls, must necessarily have 
them in their understandings, know the truth of them, and assent to it. 

Sect. 6. That men know them when they come to the use of reason 
answered. — To avoid this, it is usually answered, that all men know and 
assent to them, when they come to the use of reason, and this is enough to 
prove them innate. I answer, 

Sect. 7. Doubtful expressions, that have scarce any signification, go 
for clear reasons to those who, being prepossessed, take not the pains to 
oxnmine even what they themselves say. For to apply this answer with 
any tolerable sense to our present purpose, it must signify one of these 
two things: either, that as soon as men come to the use of reason, these 
«*ijor>osp<i native inscriptions come to be known and observed by them ; or 



Ch. 2. NO INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MIND. 43 

else, that the use and exercise of men's reason assists them in the discove- 
ry of these principles, and certainly makes them known to them. 

Sect. 8. If reason discovered them, that would not prove theminnate. 
— If they mean, that by the use of reason men may discover these prin- 
ciples, and that this is sufficient to prove them innate, their way of argu- 
ing will stand thus, viz. that whatever truths reason can certainly discover 
to us, and make us firmly assent to, those are all naturally imprinted on 
the mind ; since that universal assent, which is made the mark of them, 
amounts to no more but this ; that by the use of reason we are capable to 
come to a certain knowledge of, and assent to them; and by this means, 
there will be no difference between the maxims of the mathematicians, and 
theorems they deduce from them : all must be equally allowed innate ; they 
being all discoveries made by the use of reason, and truths that a rational 
creature may certainly come to know, if he apply his thoughts rightly that 
way. 

Sect. 9. It is false that reason discovers them. — But how can these 
men think the use of reason necessary to discover principles that are sup- 
posed innate, when reason (if we may believe them) is nothing else but 
the faculty of deducing unknown truths from principles, or propositions, 
that are already known] That certainly can never be thought innate, which 
we have need of reason to discover; unless, as I have said, we will have 
all the certain truths that reason ever teaches us to be innate. We may 
as well think the use of reason necessary to make our eyes discover vis: 
ble objects, as that there should be need of*reason, or the exercise thereof, 
to make the understanding see what is originally engraven on it, and can- 
not be in the understanding, before it be perceived by it. So that to make 
reason discover those truths thus imprinted, is to say, that the use of rea- 
son discovers to a man what he knew before ; and if men have those innate 
impressed truths originally, and before the use of reason, and yet are always 
ignorant of them, till they come to the use of reason fit is in effect to say, 
that men know, and know them not, at the same time. 

Sect. 10. It will here perhaps be said, that mathematical demonstrations, 
and other truths that are not innate, are not assented to as soon as pro- 
posed, wherein they are distinguished from these maxims, and other innate 
truths. I shall have occasion to speak of assent upon the first proposing, 
more particularly by and bye. I shall here only, and that very readily, al- 
low, that these maxims and mathematical demonstrations are in this differ- 
ent; that the one has need of reason, using of proofs, to make them out, 
and to gain our assent; but the other, as soon as understood, are, without, 
any the least reasoning, embraced and assented to. But I withal beg leave 
to observe, that it lays open the weakness of this subterfuge, which re- 
quires the use of reason for the discovery of these general truths; since it 
must be confessed that in their discovery there is no use made of reasoning at 
all. And I think those who give this answer will not be forward to affirm, 
that the knowledge of this maxim, " that it is impossible for the same 
tiling to be, and not to be," is a deduction of our reason; for this would be 
to destroy that bounty of nature they seem so fond of, whilst they make 
the knowledge of those principles to depend on the labour of our thoughts. 
For all reasoning is search, and casting about, and requires pains and ap- 
plication: and how can it, with any tolerable sense, be supposed, that what 
was imprinted by nature, as the foundation and guide of our reason, should 
need the use of reason to discover it) 

Sect. 11. Those who will take the pains to reflect with a little atten- 
tion on the operations of the understanding, will find, that this ready assent 
of the mind to some truths, depends not either on native inscription, or on 
llie use of reason; but on a faculty of the mind quite distinct from bcth of 
'hem, as we shall see hereafter. Reason, therefore, having nothing to do 
m procuring our assent to these maxims, if by saying that men know and 



44 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 1 

assent to them when they come to the use of reason, be meant, that the 
jse of reason assists us in the knowledge of these maxims, it is utterly false ; 
and were it true, would prove them not to be innate. 

Sect. 12. The coming to the use of reason, not the time we come to 
know these maxims. — If by knowing and assenting to them, when we como 
to the use of reason, be meant, that this is the time when they come to be 
taken notice of by the mind ; and that, as soon as children come to the use 
of reason, they come also to know and assent to these maxims ; this also 
is false and frivolous. First, it is false : because it is evident these maxims 
are not in the mind so early as the use of reason, and therefore the coming 
to the use of reason is falsely assigned as the time of their discovery. How 
many instances of the use of reason may we observe in children, a long 
time before they have any knowledge of this maxim, " that it is impossi- 
ble for the same thing to be, and not to be'?" And a great part of illiterate 
people, and savages, pass many years, even of their rational age, without 
ever thinking on this and the like general propositions. I grant, men come 
not to the knowledge of these general and more abstract truths, which are 
thought innate, till they come to the use of reason ; and I add, nor then 
neither: which is so because, till after they come to the use of reason, those 
general abstract ideas are not framed in the mind, about which those gener- 
al maxims are, which are mistaken for innate principles : but are indeed 
discoveries made, and verities introduced and brought into the mind, by 
the same way, and discovered by the same steps, as several other propo- 
sitions, which nobody was ever- so extravagant as to suppose innate. This 
I hope to make plain in the sequel of this discourse. I allow therefore a 
necessity that men should come to the use of reason before they get the 
knowledge of those general truths, but deny that men's coming to the use 
of reason is the time of their discovery. 

Sect. 13. By this they are not distinguished from other knowable truths. 
— In the mean time It is observable, that this saying, That men know and 
assent to these maxims when they come to the use of reason, amounts, in 
reality of fact, to no more but this, That they are never known nor taken 
notice of, before the use of reason, but may possibly be assented to, some 
time after, during a man's life, but when, is uncertain ; and so may all other 
knowable truths, as well as these ; which therefore have no advantage nor 
distinction from others, by this note of being known when we come to 
the use of reason, nor are thereby proved to be innate, but quite contrary. 

Sect. 14. If coming to the use of reason were the time of their discov- 
ery, it would not prove them innate. — But, secondly, were it true that the 
precise time of their being known and assented to were when men come 
to the use of reason, neither would that prove them innate. This way of 
arguing is as frivolous as the supposition of itself is false. For by what 
kind of logic will it appear, that any notion is originally by nature imprin- 
ted in the mind in its first constitution, because it comes first to be obser- 
ved and assented to, when faculty of the mind, which has quite a distinct 
province, begins to exert itself] And therefore, the coming to the use of 
speech, if it were supposed the time that these maxims are first assented 
to, (which it may be with as much truth as the time when men come to 
the use of reason) would be as good a proof that they were innate, as to 
say, they are innate, because men assent to them wnen they come to tne 
use of reason. I agree then with these men of innate principles, that thero 
is no knowledge of these general and self-evident maxims in the mind, tiL 
it comes to the exercise of reason ; but I deny that the coming to the use 
of reason is the precise time when they are first taken notice of; and if 
that were the precise time, I deny that it would prove them innate. All 
that can, with any truth, be meant by this proposition, that men assent to 
them when they come to the use of reason, is no more but this ; that the 



Ch. 2. ON INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MIND. 45 

making of general abstract ideas, and the understanding of general names, 
being a concomitant of the rational faculty, and growing up with it, children 
commonly get not those general ideas, nor learn the names that stand for 
them, till, having for a good while exercised their reason about familiar and 
more particular ideas, they are, by their ordinary discourse and actions with 
others, acknowledged to be capable of rational conversation. If assenting 
to these maxims, when men come to the use of reason, can be true in any 
other sense, I desire it may be shown ; or at least, how in this, or any other 
sense, it proves them innate. 

Sect. 15. The steps by which the mind attains several truths. — The 
senses at first let in particular ideas, and furnish the yet empty cabinet ; 
and the mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodg- 
ed in the memory, and names got to them : afterward the mind, proceeding 
farther, abstracts them, and by degrees learns the use of general names. In 
this manner, the mind comes to be furnished with ideas and language, the 
materials about which to exercise its discursive faculty ; and the use of 
reason becomes daily more visible, as these materials that give it employ- 
ment increase. But though the having of general ideas, and the use.of gen- 
eral words and reason, usually grow together, yet, I see not how this any 
way proves them innate. The knowledge of some truths, I confess, is very 
early in the mind, but in a way that shows them not to be innate. For, if 
we will observe, we shall find it still to be about ideas, not innate, but ac- 
quired; it being about those first which are imprinted by external things, 
with which infants have earliest to do, which make the most frequent im- 
pressions on their senses. In ideas thus got, the mind discovers that some 
agree and others differ, probably as soon as it has any use of memory ; as 
soon as it is able to retain and perceive distinct ideas. But whether it be 
then, or no, this is certain ; it does so long before it has the use of words, or 
comes to that, which we commonly call "the use of reason." For a child 
knows as certainly, before it can speak, the difference between the ideas of 
sweet and bitter (i. e. that sweet is not bitter) as it knows afterward (when it 
comes to speak) that wormwood and sugar plums are not the same thing. 

Sect. 16. — A child knows not that three and four are equal to seven, till 
he comes to be able to count seven, and has got the name and idea of equal- 
ity ; ana then, upon explaining those words, he presently assents to, or ra- 
ther perceives the truth of, that proposition. But neither does he then 
readily assent, because it is an innate truth, nor was his assent wanting till 
then, because he wanted the use of reason ; but the truth of it appears to 
him, 8S soon as he has settled in his mind the clear and distinct ideas that 
these names stand for; and then he knows the truth of that proposition, 
upon the same grounds, and by the same means, that he knew before that 
a rod and a cherry are not the same thing ; and upon the same grounds also, 
that he may come to know afterward, "that it is impossible for the same 
thing to be, and not to be," as shall be more fully shown hereafter. So that 
the later it is before any one comes to have those general ideas, about which 
those maxims are ; or to know the signification of those general terms that 
stand for them ; or to put together in his mind the ideas they stand for ; the later 
also will it be before he comes to assent to those maxims, whose terms, 
with the ideas they stand for, being no more innate than those of a cat or 
a weasel, he must stay till time and observation have acquainted him with 
them ; and then he will be in a capacity to know the truth of these maxims, 
upon the first occasion that shall make him put together those ideas in his 
mind, and observe whether they agree or disagree, according as is expres- 
sed in those propositions. And therefore it is, that a man knows that eigh- 
teen and nineteen are equal to thirty-seven, by the same self-evidence that 
he knows one and two to be equal to three ; yet a child knows thi3 not so 
soon as the other, not for want of the use of reason, but because the ideas 



46 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 1 

the words eighteen, nineteen, and thirty-seven stand for, are not so soon 
got, as those which are signified by one, two, and three. 

Sect. 17. Assenting as soon as proposed and understood, proves them 
not innate. — This evasion therefore of general assent, when men come to 
the use of reason, failing as it does, and leaving no difference between those 
supposed innate, and other truths that are afterward acquired and learnt,, 
men have endeavoured to secure a universal assent to those they call max- 
ims, by saying, they are generally assented to as soon as proposed, and the 
terms they are proposed in, understood : seeing all men, even children, as 
soon as they hear and understand the terms, assent to these propositions, 
they think it is sufficient to prove them innate. For since men never fail, 
after they have once understood the words, to acknowledge them for undoubt- 
ed truths they would infer, that certainly these propositions were first lodged 
m the understanding, which, without any teaching, the mind, at the very 
first proposal, immediately closes with, and assents to, and after that never 
doubts again. 

Sect. 18. If such an assent be a mark of innate, then "that one and 
two are equal to three; that sweetness is not bitterness," and a thousand 
the like, must be innate. — In answer to this, I demand " whether ready as- 
sent given to a proposition upon first hearing, and understanding the terms, 
be a certain mark of an innate principle'?" If it be not, such a general assent 
is in vain urged as a proof of them: if it be said, that it is a mark of innate, 
they must then allow all such propositions to be innate which are generally 
assented to as soon as heard, whereby they will find themselves plentifully 
stored with innate principles. For upon the same ground, viz. of assent 
at first hearing and understanding the terms, that men would have those 
maxims pass for innate, they must also admit several propositions about 
numbers to be innate ; and thus, that one and two are equal to three ; that 
two and two are equal to four ; and a multitude of other the like proposi- 
tions in numbers, that every body assents to at first hearing and understand- 
ing the terms, must have a place among these innate axioms. Nor is this 
the prerogative of numbers alone, and propositions made about several of 
them ; but even natural philosophy and all the other sciences, afford proposi- 
tions which are smo to meet with assent as soon as they are understood. 
That two bodies cannot be in the same place, is a truth that nobody any 
more sticks at, than at these maxims: "that it is impossible for the same 
things to be, and not to be; that white is not black; that a square is not a 
circle ; that yellowness is not sweetness ;" these, and a million of other such 
propositions (as many at least as we have distinct ideas of), every man in 
his wits, at first hearing, and knowing what the names stand for, must ne- 
cessarily assent to. If these men will be true to their own rule, and have 
assent at first hearing and understanding the terms to be a mark of innate, 
they must allow, not only as many innate propositions, as men have dis- 
tinct ideas, but as many as men can make propositions, wherein different 
ideas are denied one of another. Since every proposition, wherein one dif- 
ferent idea is denied of another, will as certainly find assent at first hear- 
ing and understanding the terms, as this general one, "it is impossible for 
the same thing to be, and not to be;" or that which is the foundation of it, 
and is the easier understood of the two, "the same is not different:" by 
which account they will have legions of innate propositions of this ono 
sort, without mentioning any other. But since no proposition can be in- 
nate, unless the ideas, about which it is, be innate ; this will be, to suppose 
all our ideas of colours, sounds, taste, figure, &c. innate, than which there 
cannot be any thing more opposite to reason and experience. Universal 
and ready assent, upon hearing and understanding the terms, is (I grant) 
a mark of self-evidence ; but self-evidence, depending not on innate impres- 
sions, but on something else (as we shall show hereafter), belongs to sev- 
eral propositions, which nobody was yet so extravagant as to pretend to bo 
innate. 



Ch. 2. NO INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MIND. 4? 

Sect. 19. Such less general propositions known before these universal 
maxims. — Nor let it be said, that those more particular self-evident pro- 
positions, which are assented to at first hearing, as, that one and two are 
equal to three ; that green is not red, &c. ; are received as the consequence 
of those more universal propositions, which are looked on as innate prin. 
ciples ; since any one, who will but take the pains to observe what passes in 
the understanding, will certainly find, that these, and the like less general 
propositions, are certainly known, and firmly assented to, by those who are 
utterly ignorant of those more general maxims ; and so, being earlier in the 
mind than those (as they are called) first principles, cannot owe to them 
the assent wherewith they are received at first hearing. 

Sect. 20. One and one equal to two, <fc. not general nor useful, 
answered. — If it be said, that "these propositions, viz. two and two are 
equal to four; red is not blue, &c. are not general maxims, nor of any great 
use;" I answer, that makes nothing to the argument of universal assent, upon 
hearing and understanding : for, if that be the certain mark of innate, whatever 
proposition can be found that receives general assent as soon as heard and , 
understood, that must be admitted for an innate proposition, as well as this 
maxim, " that it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be;" they 
being upon this ground equal. And as to the difference of being more gen- 
eral, that makes this maxim more remote from being innate ; those general 
and abstract ideas being more strangers to our first apprehensions, than those 
of more particular self-evident propositions ; and therefore it is longer be- 
fore they are admitted and assented to by the growing understanding. 
And as to the usefulness of these magnified maxims, that perhaps will not 
be found so great as is generally conceived, when it comes in its due place 
to be more fully considered. 

Sect. 21. These maxims not being known sometimes until proposed, 
proves them not innate. — But we have not yet done with assenting to 
propositions at first hearing and understanding their terms; it is fit we first 
take notice, that this, instead of being a mark that they are innate, is a proof 
of the contrary ; since it supposes that several, who understand and know 
other things, are ignorant of these principles, until they are proposed to them ; 
and that one may be unacquainted with these truths, until he hears them 
from others. For if they were innate, what need they be proposed in or 
der to gaining assent ; when, by being in the understanding, by a natural 
and original impression (if there were any such), they could not but beknowr, 
before 1 Or doth the proposing them print them clearer in the mind than 
nature did ? If so, then the consequence will be, that a man knows them 
better after he has been thus taught them than he did before. Whence it 
will follow, that these principles may be made more evident to us by others' 
teaching, than nature has made them by impression ; which will ill agree 
with the opinion of innate principles, and give but little authority to them; 
out, on the contrary, makes them unfit to be the foundations of all our other 
knowledge, as they are pretended to be. This cannot be denied; that mta 
grow first acquainted with many of these self-evident truths, upon their 
being proposed; but it is clear, that whosoever does so, finds in himself 
that he then begins to know a proposition which he knew not before, and 
which, from thenceforth, he never questions ; not because it was innate, 
but because the consideration of the nature of the things contained in those 
words, would not suffer him to think otherwise, how or whensoever he is 
brought to reflect on them: and if whatever is assented to, at first hearing 
and understanding the terms, must pass for an innate principle, every well- 
grounded observation, drawn from particulars into a general rule, must be 
innate; when yet it is certain, that not all, but only sagacious heads, light 
at first on these observations, and reduce them into general propositions, 
not innate, but collected from a preceding acquaintance, and reflection on 
particular instances. These, when observing men have made them, tin- 



4S OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book i 

observing men, when they are proposed to them, cannot refuse their as. 
sent to. 

Sect. 22. Implicitly known before proposing, signifies, that the mind is 
capable of understanding them, or else signifies nothing. — If it be said, 
" the understanding hath an implicit knowledge of these principles, but not 
an explicit, before this first bearing," (as they must, who will say, " that 
they are in the understanding, before they are known") it will be hard to 
conceive what is meant by a principle imprinted on the understanding im- 
plicitly, unless ^t be this; that the mind is capable of understanding and 
assenting firmjy to such propositions. And thus all mathematical demon- 
strations, as well as first principles, must be received as native impressions 
on the mind; which I fear they will scarce allow them to be, who find it 
harder to demonstrate a proposition, than assent to it when demonstrated. 
And few mathematicians will be forward to believe, that all the diagrams 
they have drawn were but copies of those innate characters which nature 
had engraven upon their minds. 

Sect. 23. The argument of assenting on first hearing, is upon a false 
supposition of no precedent teaching. — There is, I fear, this further weak- 
ness in the foregoing argument, which would persuade us, that therefore 
those maxims are to be thought innate, which men admit at first hearing, 
because they assent to propositions, which they are not taught, nor do re- 
ceive from the force of any argument or demonstration, but a bare explication 
or understanding of the terms. Under which, there seems to me to lie this 
fallacy ; that men are supposed not to be taught, nor to learn any thing de 
novo ; when, in truth, they are taught, and do learn something they were 
ignorant of before. For first, it is evident, that they have learned the terms 
and their signification, neither of which was born with them. But this is 
not all the acquired knowledge in the case : the ideas themselves, about which 
the proposition is, are not born with them, no more than their names, but 
got afterward. So that in all propositions that are assented to at first hearing, 
the terms of the proposition, their standing for such ideas, and the ideas them- 
selves that they stand for, being neither of them innate, I would fain know 
what there is remaining in such propositions that is innate. For I would glad- 
ly have any one name that proposition, whose terms or ideas were either of 
them innate. We by degrees get ideas and names, and learn their appro- 
priated connexion one with another ; and then to propositions made in such 
terms, whose signification we have learnt, and wherein the agreement or dis- 
agreement we can perceive in our ideas, when put together, is expressed, 
we at first hearing assent ; though to other propositions, in themselves as 
certain and evident, but which are concerning ideas not so soon or so ea- 
sily got, we are at the same time no way capable of assenting. For though 
a child quickly assents to this proposition, that an " apple is not fii ?," 
when, by familiar acquaintance, he has got the ideas of those two different 
things distinctly imprinted on his mind, and has learnt that the names apple 
and fire stand for them ; yet, it will be some years after, perhaps, before the 
same child will assent to this proposition, " that it is impossible for the same 
thing to be, and not to be;" because, that though, perhaps, the words are as 
easy to be learnt, yet the signification of them being more large, comprehen- 
sive, and abstract, than of the names annexed to those sensible things the 
child hath to do with, it is longer before he learns their precise meaning, and 
it requires more time plainly to form in his mind those general ideas they 
stand for. Till that be done, you will in vain endeavour to make any child 
assent to a proposition made up of such general terms : but as soon as ever 
he has got those ideas, and learned their names, he forwardly closes with 
the one as well as the other of the fore-mentioned propositions, and with 
both for the same reason, viz. because he finds the ideas he has in his 
mind to agree or disagree, according as the words standing for them are 
affirmed or denied one of another in tb<? proposition. But if propositions 



Ch. 2. NO INNATE PRINCIPLES IN THE MIND. 49 

be brought to him in words, which stand for ideas he has not yet in his 
mind, to such propositions, however evidently true or false in themselves, 
he affords neither assent nor dissent, but is ignorant: for words being but 
empty sounds, any farther than they are signs of our ideas, we cannot but 
assent to them, as they correspond ,to those ideas we have, but no 
farther than that. But the showing by what steps and ways knowledge 
comes into our minds, and the grounds of several degrees of assent, being 
the business of the following discourse, it may suffice to have only touched 
on it here, as one reason that made me doubt of those innate principles. 

Sect. 24. Not innate, because not universally assented to. — To conclude 
this argument of universal consent, I agree, with these defenders of innate 
principles, that if they are innate, they must needs have universal assent; 
for that a truth should be innate, and yet not assented to, is to me as unin- 
telligible, as for aman to know a truth, and be ignorant of it at the same 
time. But then, by these men's own confession, they cannot be innate ; 
since they are not assented to by those who understand not the terms, nor 
by a great part of those who do understand them, but have yet never heard 
nor thought of those propositions ; which, I think, is at least one half of 
mankind. But were the number far less, it wouM be enough to destroy 
universal assent, and thereby show these propositions not to be innate, if 
children alone were ignorant of them. 

Sect. 25. These maxims not the first known. — But that I may not be 
accused to argue from the thoughts of infants, which are unknown to us, 
and to conclude from what passes in their understandings before they ex- 
press it ; I say next, that these two general propositions are not the truths 
that first possess the minds of children, nor are antecedent to all acquired 
and adventitious notions: which, if they were innate, they must needs be. 
Whether we can determine it or no, it matters not ; there is certainly a 
time when children begin to think, and their words and actions do assure 
us that they do so. When therefore they are capable of thought, of know- 
ledge, of assent, can it rationally be supposed they can be ignorant of those 
notions that nature has imprinted, were there any such? Can it be imagi- 
ned with any appearance of reason, that they perceive the impressions 
from things without, and be at the same time ignorant of those characters 
which nature itself has taken care to stamp within? Can they receive and 
assent to adventitious notions, and be ignorant of those which are supposed 
woven into the* very principles of their being, and imprinted there in in- 
delible characters, to be the foundation and guide of all their acquired know- 
ledge and future reasonings 1 This would be to make nature take pains to 
no purpose, or at least, to write very ill ; since its characters could not be 
read by those eyes which saw other things very well ; and those are very 
ill supposed the clearest parts of truth, and the foundations of all our know- 
ledge, which are not first known, and without which the undoubted know- 
ledge of several other things may be had. The child certainly knows that 
the nurse that feeds it is neither the cat it plays with, nor the blackmoor 
it is afraid of; that the wormseed or mustard it refuses is not the apple or 
sugar it cries for; this it is certaintly and undoubtedly assured of: but 
will any one say, it is by virtue of this principle, " that it is impossible for 
the same thing to be, and not to be," that it so firmly assents to these and 
other parts of its knowledge ; or that the child has any notion or apprehen- 
sion of that proposition, at an age, wherein yet, it is plain, it knows a 
great many other truths ? He that will say, children join these general 
abstract speculations with their sucking bottles, and their rattles, may per- 
haps with justice, be thought to have more passion and zeal for his opinion, 
but less sincerity and truth, than one of that age. 

Sect. 26. And so not innate. — Though therefore there be several gen- 
eral propositions that meet with constant and ready assent, as soon as 
proposed to men grown up, who have attained the use of more general 
G 



50 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book i. 

and abstract ideas, and names standing for them ; yet they not being to be 
found in those of tender years, who nevertheless know other things, they 
cannot pretend to universal assent of intelligent persons, and so by no 
means can be supposed innate ; it being impossible that any truth which is 
innate (if there were any such) should be unknown, at least to any one 
who knows any thing else: since, if there are innate truths, they must be 
innate thoughts ; there being nothing a truth in the mind that it has never 
thought on. Whereby it is evident, if there be any innate truths in the 
mind, they must necessarily be the first of any thought on ; the first that 
appear there. 

Sect. 27. Not innate, because they appear least, where what is innate 
shows itself clearest. — That the general maxims we are discoursing of are 
not known to children, idiots, and a great part of mankind, we have already 
sufficiently proved; whereby it is evident, they have not .a universal assent, 
nor are general impressions. But there is this farther argument in it 
against their being innate : that these characters, if they were native and 
original impressions, should appear fairest and clearest in those persons 
in whom yet we find no footsteps of them : and it is, in my opinion, a strong 
presumption that they ere not innate, since they are least known to those, 
in whom, if they were innate, they must needs exert themselves with most 
force and vigour. For children, idiots, savages, and illiterate people, being 
of all others the least corrupted by custom, or borrowed opinions, learning 
and education having not cast their native thoughts into new moulds, nor 
by superinducing foreign and studied doctrines, confounded those fair 
characters nature had written there ; one might reasonably imagine, that 
in their minds, these innate notions should lie open fairly to every one's 
view, as it is certain the thoughts of children do. It might very well be 
expected, that these principles should be perfectly known to naturals, which 
being stamped immediately on the soul (as these men suppose), can have 
no dependence on the constitutions or organs of the body, the only con- 
fessed difference between them and others. One would think, according 
to these men's principles, that all these native beams of light (were there 
any such) should in those who have no reserves, no arts of concealment, 
shine out in their full lustre, and leave us in no more doubt of their being 
there, than we are of their love of pleasure and abhorrence of pain. But, 
alas ! among children, idiots, savages, and the grossly illiterate, what gen- 
eral maxims are to be found? What universal principles* of knowledge? 
Their notions are few and narrow, borrowed onlyfrom those objects they have 
had most to do with, and which have made upon their senses the frequentest 
and strongest impressions. A child knows his nurse and his cradle, and by 
degrees, the playthings of a little more advanced age; and a young savage 
has, perhaps, his head filled with love and hunting, according to the fashion 
of nis tribe. But he that from a child untaught, or a wild inhabitant of the 
woods, would expect these abstract maxims and reputed principles ot 
sciences, will, I fear, find himself mistaken. Such kind of general propo- 
sitions are seldom mentioned in the huts of Indians, much less are they to 
be found in the thoughts of children, or any impressions of them on the 
minds of naturals. They are the language and business of the schools and 
academies of learned nations, accustomed to that sort of conversation or 
learning, where disputes are frequent ; these maxims being suited to arti- 
ficial argumentation, and useful for conviction, but not much conducing to 
t he discovery of truth or advancement of knowledge. But of their small use 
for the improvement of knowledge, I shall have occasion to speak more at 
large, I. 4, c. 7. 

Sect. 28. Recapitulation. — I know not how absurd this may seem to 
the masters of demonstration : and probably it will hardly down with any 
body at first hearing. I must therefore beg a little truce with prejudice, 
and the forbearance of censure, till I have been heard out in the sequel of 



Ch.2. NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. 51 

this discourse, being very willing to submit to better judgments. And since 
I impartially search after truth, I shall not be sorry to be convinced that J 
have been too fond of my own notions; which, I confess, we are all apt to 
be, when application and study have warmed our heads with them. 

Upon the whole matter, I cannot see any ground to think these two 
speculative maxims innate, since they are not universally assented to ; and 
the assent they so generally find is no other than what several propositions, 
not allowed to be innate, equally partake in witji them ; and since the as- 
sent that is given them is produced another way, and comes not from 
natural inscription, as I doubt not but to make appear in the following dis- 
course. And if these first principles of knowledge and science are found 
not to be innate, no other speculative maxims can (I suppose) with better 
right pretend to be so. 



CHAPTER III. 

NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. 

Sect. 1. No moral principles so clear and so generally received as the 
f or ementioned speculative maxims. — If those speculative maxims, whereof 
we discoursed in the foregoing chapter, have not an actual universal assent 
from all mankind, as we there proved, it is much more visible concerning 
practical principles, that they come short of a universal reception : and I 
think it will be hard to instance any one moral rule which can pretend to 
so general and ready an assent as, "what is, is;" or to be so manifest a 
truth as this, "that it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be." 
Whereby it is evident that they are farther removed from a title to be in- 
nate ; and the doubt of their being native impressions on the mind is stronger 
against those moral principles than the other. Not that it brings their truth 
at all in question : they are equally true, though not equally evident. Those 
speculative maxims carry their own evidence with them : but moral princi- 
ples require reasoning and discourse, and some exercise of the mind, to dis- 
cover the certainty of their truth. They lie not open as natural characters 
engraven on the mind ; which, if any such were, they must needs be visible 
by themselves, and by their own light be certain and known to everybody. 
But this is no derogation to truth and certainty, no more than it is to 
the truth or certainty of the three angles of a triangle being equal to two 
right ones ; because it is not so evident, as, "the whole is bigger than a part ;" 
nor so apt to be assented to at first hearing. It may suffice, that these 
moral rules are capable of demonstration ; and therefore it is our own fault 
if we come not to a certain knowledge of them. But the ignorance wherein 
many men are of them, and the slowness of assent wherewith others receive 
them, are manifest proofs that they are not innate, and such as offer them- 
selves to their view without searching. 

Sect. 2. Faith and justice not owned as principles by all men. — Whether 
there be any such moral principles, wherein all men do agree, I appeal to 
any who have been but moderately conversant in the history of mankind, 
and looked abroad beyond the smoke of their own chimneys. Where is 
that practical truth, that is universally received without doubt or question, 
as it must be if innate] Justice, and keeping of contracts, is that which 
most men seem to agree in. This is a principle which is thought to extend 
itself to the dens of thieves, and the confederacies of the greatest villains ; and 
they who have gone farthest towards the putting offof humanity itself, keep 
faith and rules of justice one with another. I grant that outlaws themselves 
do this one amongst another; but it is without receiving these as the innate 



o2 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book. 1. 

lavs af nature. They practise them as rules of convenience within their 
own communities: but it is impossible to conceive, that he embraces justice 
as a practical principle, who acts fairly with his fellow-highwayman, and 
t the same time plunders or kills the next honest man he meets with. Jus- 
tice and truth are the common ties of society; and, therefore, even outlaws 
and robbers, who break with all the world besides, must keep faith and rules 
of equity among themselves, or else they cannot hold together. But will 
any one say, that those that live by fraud or rapine have innate principles 
of truth and justice which they allow and assent to. 

Sect. 3. Objection, Though men deny them in their practice, yet they 
admit them in their thoughts, answered. — Perhaps it will be urged, that 
the tacit assent of their minds agrees to what their practice contradicts. 
I answer, first, I have always thought the actions of men the best interpre- 
ters of their thoughts. But since it is certain, that most men's practices, 
and some men's open professions, have either questioned or denied these prin- 
ciples, it is impossible to establish an universal consent (though we should 
look for it only amongst grown men,) without which it is impossible to con- 
clude them innate. Secondly, it is very strange and unreasonable to sup- 
pose innate practical principles that terminate only in contemplation. Prac- 
tical principles derived from nature are there for operation, and must pro- 
duce conformity of action, not barely speculative assent to their truth, or 
else they are in vain distinguished from speculative maxims. Nature, I con- 
fess, has put into man a desire of happiness, and an aversion to misery ; 
these indeed are innate practical principles, which (as practical principles 
ought) do continue constantly to operate and influence all our actions with- 
out ceasing; these may be observed, in all persons and all ages, steady and 
universal ; but these are inclinations of the appetite to good, not impressions 
of truth on the understanding. I deny not that there are natural tendencies 
imprinted on the minds of men; and that, from the very first instances of 
sense and perception, there are some things that are grateful, and others un- 
welcome to them ; some things that they incline to, and others that they 
fly ; but this makes nothing for innate characters on the mind, which are to 
be the principles of knowledge, regulating our practice. Such natural im- 
pressions on the understanding are so far from being confirmed hereby, that 
this is an argument against them ; since, if there were certain characters 
imprinted by nature on the understanding, as the principles of knowledge, 
we could not but perceive them constantly operate in us, and influence our 
knowledge, as we do those others on the will and appetite ; which never 
cease to be the constant springs and motives of all our actions, to which we 
perpetually feel them strongly impelling us. 

Sect. 4. Moral rules need a proof, ergo, not innate. — Another reason 
that makes me doubt of any innate practical principles, is, that I think 
there cannot any one moral rule be proposed, whereof a man may not just- 
ly demand a reason; which would be perfectly ridiculous and absurd, if they 
were innate, or so much as self-evident; which every innate principle must 
needs be, and not need any proof to ascertain its truth, nor want any reason 
to gain it approbation. He would be thought void of common sense, who 
asked, on the one side, or on the other side went to give a reason, why "it 
is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be." It carries its own 
light and evidence with it, and needs no other proof: he that understands the 
terms, assents to it for its own sake, or else nothing will ever be able to 
prevail with him to do it. But should that most unshaken rule of morality, 
and foundation of all social virtue, " that one should do as he would be 
done unto," be proposed to one who never heard it before, but yet is of ca- 
pacity to understand its meaning, might he not, without any absurdity, ask 
a reason why] And were not he that proposed it bound to make out the 
truth and reasonableness ot it. to him? which plainly shows it not to be in- 
nate; for if it were, it coula neither want nor receive any proof; but imiiC 



Ch. 3 NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. 53 

need's (at least as soon as heard and understood) be received and assented 
to, as an unquestionable truth, which a man can by no means doubt of. So 
that the truth of all these moral rules plainly depends upon some other an- 
tecedent to them, and from which they must be deduced ; which could not 
be, if either they were innate, or so much as self-evident. 

Sect. 5. Instance in keeping compacts. — That men should keep their 
compacts, is certainly a great and undeniable rule in morality. But yet, if 
a Christian, who has the view of happiness and misery in another life, be 
asked why a man must keep his word ? he will give this as a reason ; Because 
God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires it of us. But if 
a Hobbist be asked why, he will answer, Because the public requires it, 
and the leviathan will punish you if you do not. And if one of the old 
philosophers had been asked, he would have answered, Because it was dis- 
honest, below the dignity of a man, and opposite to virtue, the highest per- 
fection of human nature, to do otherwise. 

Sect. 6. Virtue generally approved, not because innate, but because 
profitable. — Hence naturally flows the great variety of opinions concern- 
ing moral rules which are to be found among men, according to the differ- 
ent sorts of happiness they have a prospect of, or propose to themselves : 
which could not be, if practical principles were innate, and imprinted in our 
minds immediately by the hand of God. I grant the existence ofGodisso 
many ways manifest, and the obedience we owe him so congruous to the 
light of reason, that a great part of mankind give testimony to the law of 
nature ; but yet I think it must be allowed, that several moral rules may re- 
ceive from mankind a very general approbation, without either knowing or 
admitting the true ground of morality ; which can only be the will and law 
of a God, who sees men in the dark, has in his hand rewards and punish- 
ments, and power enough to call to account the proudest offender: for God 
having, by an inseparable connexion, joined virtue and public happiness to- 
gether, and made the practice thereof necessary to the preservation of society, 
and visibly beneficial to all with whom the virtuous man has to do, it is no 
wonder that every one should not only allow, but recommend and magnify, 
those rules to others, from whose observance of them he is sure to reap ad- 
vantage to himself. He may, out of interest as well as conviction, cry up 
that for sacred, which, if once trampled on and profaned, he himself cannot 
be safe nor secure. This, though it takes nothing from the moral and eter- 
nal obligation which these rules evidently have, yet it shows that the out- 
ward acknowledgment men pay to them in their words, proves not that 
they are innate principles ; nay, it proves not so much as that men as- 
sent to them inwardly in their own minds, as the inviolable rules of their own 
practice ; since we find tbat self-interest, and the conveniences of this life, 
make many men own an outward profession and approbation of them, whose 
actions sufficiently prove that they very little consider the lawgiver that 
prescribed these rules, nor the hell that he has ordained for the punishment 
of those that transgress them. 

Sect. 7. Men's actions convince us that the rule of virtue is not their 
internal principle. — For if we will not in civility allow too much sincerity 
to professions of most men, but think their actions to be the interpreters of 
their thoughts, we shall find that they have no such internal veneration for 
these rules, nor so full a persuasion of their certainty and obligation. The 
great principle of morality, "to do as one would be done to," is more com- 
mended than practised. But the breach of this rule cannot be a greater 
vice than to teach others that it is no moral rule, nor obligatory, would be 
thought madness, and contrary to that interest men sacrifice to, when they 
break it themselves. Perhaps conscience will be urged as checking us for 
such breaches, and so the internal obligation and establishment of the rule 
be preserved. 

Sect. 8. Conscience no proof of any innate moral rule. — To which I 



54 . OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book J 

answer, that I doubt not but, without being written on their hearts, many 
men may, by the same way that they come to the knowledge of other fellings, 
come to assent to several moral rules, and be convinced of their obligation. 
Others also may come to be of the same mind, from their education, com- 
pany, and customs of their country ; which persuasion, however got, will 
serve to set conscience on work, which is nothing else but our own opinion 
or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own actions. And if 
conscience be a proof of innate principles, contraries may be innate princi- 
ples ; since some men, with the same bent of conscience, prosecute what 
others avoid. 

Sect. 9. Instances of enormities 'practised without remorse. — But I 
cannot see how any men should ever transgress those moral rules, with 
confidence and serenity, were they innate, and stamped upon their minds. 
View but an army at the sacking of a town, and see what observation or 
sense of moral principles, or what touch of conscience for all the out- 
rages they do. Robberies, murders, rapes, are the sports of men set at 
liberty from punishment and censure. Have there not been whole nations, 
and those of the most civilized people, amongst whom the exposing their 
children, and leaving them in the fields to perish by want or wild beasts, 
has been the practice, as little condemned or scrupled, as the begetting them 1 
Do they not still, in some countries, put them into the same graves with 
their mothers, if they die in childbirth ; or despatch them, if a pretended 
astrologer declares them to have unhappy stars 1 And are there not placet- 
where, at a certain age, they kill or expose their parents without any re- 
morse at all] In a part of Asia, the sick, when their case comes to be 
thought desperate, are carried out and laid on the earth, before they are 
dead ; and left there, exposed to wind and weather, to perish without as- 
sistance or. pity(a). It is familiar among the Mingrelians, a people professing 
Christianity, to bury their children alive without scruple (6). There are 
places where they geld their children(c). The Caribbees were wont 
to geld their children, on purpose to fat and eat them(d). And Garcilasso 
de la Vega tells us of a people in Peru which were wont to fat and eat the 
children they got on their female captives, whom they kept as concubines 
for that purpose ; and when they were past breeding, the mothers them- 
selves were killed, too, and eaten(e). The virtues whereby the Tououpin- 
ambos believed they merited paradise were revenge, and eating abundance 
of their enemies. They have not so much as the name of God(/), and have 
ao religion, no worship. The saints who are canonized amongst the Turks 
lead lives which one cannot with modesty relate. A remarkable passage 
to this purpose, out of the voyage of Baumgarten, which is a book not 
every day to be met with, I shall set down at large in the language it is 
published in. Ibi (sc. prope Belbes in iEgypto) vidimus sanctum unum 
Saracenicum inter arenarum cumulos, ita ut ex utero matris prodiit, nudum 
sedentem. Mos est, ut didicimus, Mahometistis , ut eos, qui amentes et 
sine ratione sunt, pro Sanctis colant et venerentur. Insuper et eos, qui cum 
diu vitam egerint inquinatissimam, volimtariam demum poenitentiam et pau- 
pertatem, sanctitate venerandos deputant. Ejusmodi vero genus hominum 
libertatem quandam erfrsenem habent, domos quas volunt intrandi, edendi, 
bibendi, et quod majus est, concumbendi ; ex quo concubitu si proles seeuta 
fuerit, sancta similiter habetur. His ergo nominibus dum vivunt, mag- 
nos exhibent honores ; mortuis vero vel templa vel monumenta extruunt 
amplissima, eosque contingere ac sepelire maxima? fortunse ducunt loco. 
Audivimus hsec dicta et dicenda per interpretem a Mucrelo nostro. Insuper 
sanctum ilium, quem eo loco vidimus, publicitus apprime commendari, eum 

{a) Gruber apud Thevenot, part 4, p. IS. (b) Lambert apud Thevenot, p. 38. 

(c) Vossius de Nili Origine, c. 18, 19. (d) P. Mart. Dec. 1. 

(e) Hist, des Incas. 1. 1. c. 12. (/) Lery, c. 16, 216 231. 



Ch. 3. NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. £; 

esse hominem sanctum, divinum ac integritate prsecipuum ; eo quod, nee 
famiinarum unquam esset, nee puerorum sed tantummodo assellarum con- 
cubitor atque muliarum. Peregr. Baumgarten, 1. 2, c. 1, p. 73. More of 
.he same kind, concerning these precious saints among the Turks, may be 
been in Pietro della Valle, in his letter of the 25th of January 1616. Where 
then are those innate principles of justice, piety, gratitude, equity, chastity ? 
Or, where is that universal consent, that assures us there are such inbred 
rules ? Murders in duels, when fashion has made thern honourable, are 
committed without remorse of conscience ; nay, in many places, innocence 
in this case is the greatest ignominy. And if we look abroad, to take a 
view of men as they are, we shall find that they have remorse in one place, 
for doing or omitting that which others, in another place, think they merit by. 

Sect. 10. Men have contrary practical principles. — He that will care- 
fully peruse the history of mankind, and look abroad into the several tribes 
of men, and with indifference survey their actions, will be able to satisfy 
himself that there is scarce that principle of morality to be named, or rule 
of virtue to be thought on, (those only excepted that are absolutely neces- 
sary to hold society together, which commonly, too, are neglected betwixt 
distinct societies,) which is not, somewhere or other, slighted and con- 
demned by the -general fashion of whole societies of men, governed by 
practical opinions and rules of living quite opposite to others. 

Sect. 11. Whole nations reject several moral rules. — Here, perhaps, it 
will be objected, that it is no argument that the rule is not known, because 
it is broken. I grant the objection good where men, though they transgress, 
yet disown not the law ; where fear of shame, censure, or punishment, car- 
ries the mark of some awe it has upon them. But it is impossible to con- 
ceive that a whole nation of men should all publicly reject and renounce 
what every one of them, certainly and infallibly, knew to be a law; for so 
they must, who have it naturally imprinted on their minds. It is possible 
men may sometimes own rules of morality, which, in their private thoughts, 
they do not believe to be true, only to keep themselves in reputation and 
esteem among those who are persuaded of their obligation. But it is not 
to be imagined that a whole society of men should publicly and professed- 
ly disown and cast off a rule, which they could not, in their own minds, 
but be infallibly certain was a law ; nor be ignorant that all men they should 
have to do with knew it to be such : and therefore must every one of them 
apprehend from others all the contempt and abhorrence due to one who 
professes himself void of humanity : and one, who, confounding the known 
and natural measures of right and wrong, cannot but be looked on as the 
professed enemy of their peace and happiness. Whatever practical prin- 
ciple is innate, cannot but be known to every one to be just and good. It is 
therefore little less than a contradiction to suppose that whole nations of 
men should, both in their professions and practice, unanimously and uni- 
versally give the lie to what, by the most invincible evidence, every one of 
them knew to be true, right, and good. This is enough to satisfy us that 
no practical rule, which is any where universally, and with public approba- 
tion or allowance, transgressed, can be supposed innate. But I have some- 
thing further to add, in answer to this objection. 

Sect. 12. The breaking of a rule, say you, is no argument that it is 
unknown. I grant it: but the generally allowed breach of it anywhere, 
I say, is a proof that it is not innate. For example, let us take any of these 
rules, which being the most obvious deductions of human reason, and con- 
formable to the natural inclination of the greatest part of men, fewest 
people have had the impudence to deny, or inconsideration to doubt of. 
If any can be thought to be naturally imprinted, none, I think, can have a 
fairer pretence to be innate than this; " parents preserve and cherish your 
children." When, therefore, you say that this is an innate rule, what de 
vou mean? Either that it is an innate principle, which upon all occasions 



56 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 1. 

excites and directs the actions of all men ; or else, that it is a truth, which 
all men have imprinted on their minds, and which therefore they know and 
assent to. But in neither of these senses is it innate. First, that it is 
not a principle which influences all men's actions, is what I have proved 
by the examples before cited: nor need we seek so far as Mingrelia or 
Peru to find instances of such as neglect, abuse, nay, and destroy their chil- 
dren; or look on it only as the more than brutality of some savage and 
barbarous nations, when we remember that it was a familiar and uncon- 
demned practice among the Greeks and Romans to expose, without pity 
or remorse, their innocent infants. Secondly, that it is an innate truth, 
known to all men, is also false. For " parents, preserve your children," 
is so far from an innate truth, that it is no truth at all : it being a com- 
mand, and not a proposition, and so not capable of truth or falsehood. To 
make it capable of being assented to as true, it must be reduced to some 
such propositions as this: "it is the duty of parents to preserve their chil- 
dren." But what duty is, cannot be understood without a law; nor a law 
be known, or supposed, without a lawmaker, or without reward and punish- 
ment; so that it is impossible that this, or any other practical principle, 
should be innate, i. e. be imprinted on the mind as a duty, without suppos- 
ing the ideas of God, of law, of obligation, of punishment, of a life after 
this, innate. For that punishment follows not, in this life, the breach of this 
rule, and consequently, that it has not the force of a law in countries where 
the generally allowed practice runs counter to it, is in itself evident. But 
these ideas (which must be all of them innate, if any thing as a duty be so) 
are so far from being innate, that it is not every studious or thinking man, 
much less every one that is born, in whom they are to be found clear and 
distinct: and that one of them, which of all others seems most likely to be 
innate, is not so (I mean the idea of God) I think, in the next chapter, 
will appear very evident to any considering man. 

Sect. 13. From what has been said, I think we may safely conclude, 
that whatever practical rule is, in any place, generally, and with allowance, 
broken, cannot be supposed innate : it being impossible that men should, 
without shame or fear, confidently and serenely break a rule, which they 
could not but evidently know that God had set up, and would certainly 
punish the breach of (which they must, if it were innate) to a degree to 
make it a very ill bargain to the transgressor. Without such a knowledge 
as this, a man can never be certain that any thing is his duty. Ignorance, 
or doubt of the law, hopes to escape the knowledge or power of the law- 
maker, or the like, may make men give way to a present appetite ; but 
let any one see the fault, and the rod by it, and with the transgression a 
lire ready to punish it ; a pleasure tempting, and the hand of the Almighty 
visibly held up, and prepared to take vengeance (for this must be the case, 
where any duty is imprinted on the mind ;) and then tell me whether it be 
possible for people, with such a prospect, such a certain knowledge as this, 
wantonly, and without scruple, to offend against a law which they carry 
about them in indelible characters, and that stares them in the face whilst 
they are breaking it? Whether men, at the same time that they feel in them- 
selves the imprinted edicts of an omnipotent lawmaker, can with assurance 
and gaiety slight and trample under foot his most sacred injunctions] And 
lastly, whether it be possible, that whilst a man thus openly bids defiance 
to this innate law and supreme lawgiver, all the by-standers, yea, even the 
governors and rulers of the people, full of the same sense both of the law 
and law-maker, should silently connive, without testifying their dislike, or 
laying the least blame on it ] Principles of actions indeed there are lodged 
in men's appetites, but these are so far from being innate moral principles, 
that, if they were left to their full swing, they would carry men to the over- 
turning of all morality. Moral laws are set as a curb and restraint to these 
exorbitant desires, which they cannot be but by rewards and punishments, that 



Ch. 3. NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. 57 

will overbalance the satisfaction any one shall propose to himself in the 
breach of the law. If, therefore, any thing be imprinted on the mind )f all 
men as a law, all men must have a certain and unavoidable knowledge that 
certain and unavoidable punishment will attend the breach of it. For if 
men can be ignorant or doubtful of what is innate, innate principles are in- 
sisted on and urged to no purpose ; truth and certainty (the things pretended) 
are not at all secured by them ; but men are in the same uncertain floating 
estate with as without them. An evident indubitable knowledge of unavoida- 
ble punishment, great enough to make the transgression veryuneligible, must 
accompany an innate law ; unless, with an innate law, they can suppose an 
innate gospel too. I would not be here mistaken, as if, because I deny an 
innate law, I thought there were none but positive laws. There is a great 
deal of difference between an innate law, and a law of nature ; between 
something imprinted on our minds in their very original, and something 
that we being ignorant of, may attain to the knowledge of by the use and 
due application of our natural faculties. And I think they equally forsake the 
truth, who, running into contrary extremes, either affirm an innate law, or 
deny that there is a law knowable by the light of nature, i. e. without the 
help of positive revelation. 

Sect. 14. Those who maintain innate practical principles, tell us not 
what they are. — The difference there is among men in their practical prin- 
ciples is so evident, that, I think, I need say no more to evince that it will 
be impossible to find any innate moral rules by this mark of g-eneral assent : 
and it is enough to make one suspect that the supposition of such innate 
principles is but an opinion taken up at pleasure ; since those who talk so 
confidently of them are so sparing. to tell us which they are. This might 
with justice be expected from those men who lay stress upon this opinion ; 
and it gives occasion to distrust either their knowledge or charity, who, 
declaring that God has imprinted on the minds of men the foundations of 
knowledge, and the rules of living, are yet so little favourable to the infor- 
mation of their neighbours, or the quiet of mankind, as not to point out 
to them which they are, in the variety men are distracted with. But, 
in truth, were there any such innate principles, there would be no need to 
teach them. Did men find such innate propositions stamped on their minds, 
they would easily be able to distinguish them from other truths, that they 
afterwards learned and deduced from them ; and there would be nothing 
more easy than to know what, and how many, they were. There could be 
no more doubt about their number than there is about the number of our 
fingers ; and it is like then every system would be ready to give them us 
by tale. But since nobody, that I know, has yet ventured to give a cata- 
logue of them, they cannot blame those who doubt of these innate principles ; 
since even they who require men to believe that there are such innate 
propositions, do not tell us what they are. It is easy to foresee, that if 
different men of different sects should go about to give us a list of those 
innate practical principles, they would set down only such as suited their 
distinct hypotheses, and were fit to support the doctrines of their particu- 
lar schools or churches ; a plain evidence that there are no such innate 
truths. Nay, a great part of men are so far from finding any such innate 
moral principles in themselves, that by denying freedom to mankind, and 
thereby making men no other than bare machines, they take away not only 
innate, but all moral rules whatsoever, and leave not a possibility to believe 
any such, to those who cannot conceive how any tiling can be capable of 
a law that is not a free agent ; and, upon that ground, they must necessa- 
rily reject all principles of virtue, who cannot put morality and mechanism 
together ; which are not very easy to be reconciled or made consistent. 

Sect. 15. Lord Herbert's innate principles examined. — When I had 
writ this, being informed that my lord Herbert had, in his book De Veritate, 
assigned these innate principles, I presently consulted him, hoping to find, 
H 



58 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 1. 

in a man of so great parts, something- that might satisfy me in this point, 
and put an end to my inquiry. In his chapter de Instinctu Naturali, p. 72. 
edit. 1656, 1 met with these six marks of his Notitice Communes : 1. Prioritas. 
2. Independentia. 3. Universalitas. 4. Certitude 5. Necessitas, i. e. 
as he explains it, faciunt ad hominis conservationem. 6. Modus conforma- 
tionis, i. e. Assensus nulla interposita mora. And at the latter end of his 
little treatise, De Religione Laici, he says this of these innate principles : 
Adeo ut non uniuscujusvis religionis confinio arctentur que ubique vigent 
veritates. Sunt enim in ipsa mente coelitus descriptoe, nullisque traditioni- 
bus, sive scriptis, sive non scriptis, obnoxise, p. 3. And " Veritates nostras 
catholicse quse tanquam indubia Dei effata in foro interiori descriptaa. Thus 
having given the marks of the innate principles, or common notions, and 
asserted their being imprinted on the minds of men by the hand of God, he 
proceeds to set them down, and they are these : 1. Esse aliquod supremum 
numen. 2. Numen illud coli debere. 3. Virtutem cum pietate conjunc- 
tam optiman esse rationem cultus divini. 4. Resipiscendum esse a pecca- 
tis. 5. Dari premium vel poenam post hanc vitam transactam. Though 
I allow these to be clear truths, and such as, if rightly explained, a rational 
creature can hardly avoid giving his assent to ; yet I think he is far from 
proving them innate impressions " in foro interiori descriptae." For I must 
take leave to observe, 

Sect. 16. First, that these five propositions are either not all, or more than 
all, those common notions writ on our minds by the finger of God, if it 
were reasonable to believe any at all to be so written : since there are other 
propositions, which, even by his own rules, have as just a pretence to such 
an original, and may be as well admitted for innate principles, as at least 
some of these five he enumerates, viz. "do as thou wouldst be done unto;" 
and perhaps some hundreds of others, when well considered. 

Sect. 17. Secondly, that all his marks are not to be found in each of 
his five propositions, viz. his first, second, and third marks agree perfectly 
to neither of them ; and the first, second, third, fourth, and sixth marks 
agree but ill to his third, fourth, and fifth propositions. For besides that 
we are assured from history of many men, nay, whole nations, who doubt 
or disbelieve some or all of them, I cannot see how the third, viz. " that 
virtue joined with piety is the best worship of God," can be an innate prin- 
ciple, when the name or sound, virtue, is so hard to be understood : liable 
to so much uncertainty in its signification ; and the thing it stands for so 
much contended about, and difficult to be known. And therefore this ca ; i 
be but a very uncertain rule of human practice, and serve but very 
little to the conduct of our lives, and is therefore very unfit to be assign- 
ed as an innate practical principle. 

Sect. 18. For let us consider this proposition as to its meaning (for it 
is the sense, and not sound, that is and must be the principle or common 
notion,) viz. " virtue is the best worship of God;" i. e. is most acceptable 
to him ; which, if virtue be taken, as most commonly it is, for those actions , 
which, according to the different opinions of several countries, are accoun- 
ted laudable, will be a proposition so far from being certain, that it will 
not be true. If virtue be taken for actions conformable to God's will, 
or to the rule prescribed by God, which is the true and only measure 
of virtue, when virtue is used to signify what is in its own nature right 
and good : then this proposition, " that virtue is the best worship of God," 
will be most true and certain, but of very little use in human life : since it 
will amount to no more but this, viz. " that God is pleased with the doing 
of what he commands;" which a man may certainly know to be true, with- 
out knowing what it is that God doth command ; and so be as far from 
any rule or principle of his actions as he was before. And I think very 
few will take a proposition which amounts to no more than this, viz. 
" that God is pleased with the doing of what he himself commands," foi 



Ch. 3. NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. 5S 

an innate moral principle writ on the minds of all men (however true 
and certain it may be,) since it teaches so little. Whosoever does so, 
will have reason to think hundreds of propositions innate principles ; since 
there are many which have as good a title to be received for such, which 
nobody yet ever put into that rank of innate principles. 

Sect. 19. Nor is the fourth proposition (viz. " men must repent of their 
sins") much more instructive, till what those actions are that are meant b\ 
sins beset down. For the word peccat a, or sins, being put, as it usually is, tc 
signify in general ill actions, that will draw punishment upon the doers, 
what great principle of morality can that be, to tell us we should be sorry, 
and cease to do that which will bring mischief upon us, without knowing 
what those particular actions are, that will do so ! Indeed, this is a very 
true proposition, and fit to be inculcated on, and received by those, who 
are supposed to have been taught, what actions in all kinds are sins ; but 
neither this nor the former can be imagined to be innate principles, nor 
to be of any use, if they were innate, unless the particular measures and 
bounds of all virtues and vices were engraven in men's minds, and 
were innate principles also ; which I think is very much to be doubted. 
And, therefore, I imagine it will scarce seem possible that God should en- 
grave principles in men's minds, in words of uncertain signification, such 
as virtues and sins, which, among different men, stand for different things ; 
nay, it cannot be supposed to be in words at all ; which, being in most of 
these principles very general names, cannot be understood, but by knowing 
the particulars comprehended under them. And, in the practical instances, 
the measures must be taken from the knowledge of the actions themselves, 
and the rules of them, abstracted from words, and antecedent to the know- 
ledge of names ; which rules a man must know, what language soever he 
chance to learn, whether English or Japanese, or if he should learn no lan- 
guage at all, or never should understand the use of words, as happens in 
the case of dumb and deaf men. When it shall be made out that men 
ignorant of words, or untaught by the laws and customs of their country, 
know that it is part of the worship of God not to kill another man ; not to 
know more women than one ; not to procure abortion ; not to ex- 
pose their children ; not to take from another what is his, though 
we want it ourselves, but, on the contrary, relieve and supply his 
wants ; and whenever we have done the contrary we ought to repent, 
be sorry, and resolve to do so no more : when, I say, all men shall be proved 
actually to know and allow all these, and a thousand other such rules, all 
which come under these two general words made use of above, viz. " virtues 
et peccata," virtues and sins, there will be more reason for admitting these 
and the like for common notions and practical principles. Yet, after all, 
universal consent (were there any in moral principles) to truths, the know- 
ledge whereof may be attained otherwise, would scarce prove them innate ; 
which is all I contend for. 

Sect. 20. Obj. — innate principles may he corrupted, answered. — Nor 
will it be of much moment here to offer that very ready, but not very ma- 
terial answer, (viz.) that the innate principles of morality may, by education 
and custom, and the general opinion of those among whom we converse, 
be darkened, and at last quite worn out of the minds of men. Which as- 
sertion of theirs, if true, quite takes away the argument of universal consent, 
by which this opinion of innate principles is endeavoured to be proved ; un- 
less those men will think it reasonable that their private persuasions, or that 
of their party, should pass for universal consent : a thing not unfrequently 
done, when men, presuming themselves to be the only masters of right rea- 
son, cast by the votes and opinions of the rest of mankind as not worthy the 
reckoning. And then their argument stands thus: "the principles which 
all mankind allow for true are innate ; those that men of right reason admit, 
jure the principles allowed by all mankind ; we, and those of our mind, are 



CO OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 1. 

men of reason; therefore, we agreeing-, our principles are innate ;" which is 
a very pretty way of arguing, and a short cut to infallibility. For other- 
wise it will be hard to understand, how there be some principles which all 
men do acknowledge and agree in ; and yet there are none of those princi- 
ples, which are not by depraved custom and ill education blotted out of the 
minds of many men ; which is to say, that all men admit, but yet many men 
do deny and dissent from them. And indeed the supposition of such first 
principles will serve us to very litle purpose ; and we shall be as much at a 
loss with as without them, if they may, by any human power, such as the 
will of our teachers, or opinions of our companions, be altered or lost in us . 
and notwithstanding all this boast of first principles and innate light, we 
shall be as much in the dark and uncertainty, as if there were no such thing 
at all : it being all one, to have no rule, and one that will warp any way ; 
or, among various and contrary rules, not to know which is the right. But 
concerning innate principles, I desire these men to say, whether they can, 
or cannot, by education and custom, be blurred and blotted out: if they can- 
not, we must find them in all mankind alike, and they must be clear in every 
body : and if they may suffer variation from adventitious notions, we must 
then find them clearest and most perspicuous nearest the fountain, in chil- 
dren and illiterate people, who have received least impressions from foreign 
opinions. Let them take which side they please, they will certainly find 
it inconsistent with visible matter of fact and daily observation. 

Sect. 21. Contrary principles in the world. — I easily grant that there 
are great numbers of opinions, which by men of different countries, educa- 
tions, and tempers, are received and embraced as first and unquestionable 
principles; many whereof, both for their absurdity, as well as oppositions 
to one another, it is impossible should be true. But yet all those proposi- 
tions, how remote soever from reason, are so sacred somewhere or other, 
that men, even of good understanding in other matters, will sooner part 
with their lives, and whatever is dearest to them, than suffer themselves to 
doubt, or others to question, the truth of them. 

Sect. 22. How men commonly come by their principles. — This, however 
strange it may seem, is that which every day's experience confirms ; and 
will not, perhaps, appear so wonderful, if we consider the ways and steps 
by which it is brought about ; and how really it may come to pass, that doc- 
trines that have been derived from no better original than the superstition 
of a nurse, or the authority of an old woman, may, by length of time and 
consent of neighbours, grow up to the dignity of principles in religion or 
morality. For such who are careful (as they call it) to principle children 
*vell (and few there be who have not a set of those principles for them, 
which they believe in) instil into the unwary, and as yet unprejudiced un- 
derstanding (for white paper receives any characters,) those doctrines they 
would have them retain and profess. These being taught them as soon as 
they have any apprehension, and still as they grow up confirmed to them, 
either by the open profession, or tacit consent, of all they have to do with : 
or at least by those of whose wisdom, knowledge, and piety, they have an 
opinion, who never suffer those propositions to be otherwise mentioned 
but as the basis and foundation on which they build their religion and man- 
ners ; come, by these means, to have the reputation of unquestionable, self- 
evident, and innate truths. 

Sect. 23. To which we may add, that when men, so instructed, are 
grownup, and reflect on their own minds, they cannot find any thing more 
ancient there than those opinions which were taught them before their me- 
mory began to keep a register of their actions, or date the time when any new 
thing appeared to them ; and therefore make no scruple to conclude, that 
those propositions, of whose knowledge they can find in themselves no ori- 
ginal, were certainly the impress of God and nature upon their minds, ind 
not taught them by any one else. These they entertain and submit to, as 



Ch. 3. NO INNATE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. 61 

many dc o their parents, with veneration ; not because it is natural ; nor 
do children do it where they are not so taught; but because, having been 
always so educated, and having no remembrance of the beginning of this 
respect, they think it is natural. 

Sect. 24. This will appear very likely, and almost unavoidably to come 
to pass, if we consider the nature of mankind, and the constitution of hu- 
man affairs ; wherein most men cannot live without employing their time 
in the daily labours of their calling; nor be at quiet in their minds without 
some foundation or principle to rest their thoughts on. There is scarce 
any one so floating and superficial in his understanding, who hath not some 
reverenced propositions, which are to him the principles on which he bot- 
toms his reasonings; and by which he judgeth of truth and falsehood, right 
and wrong : which some, wanting skill and leisure, and others the inclina- 
tion, and some being taught that they ought not to examine, there are few 
to be found who are not exposed by their ignorance, laziness, education, or 
precipitancy, to take them upon trust. 

Sect. 25. This is evidently the case of all children and young folk , and 
custom, a greater power than nature, seldom failing to make them worship 
for divine what she hath inured them to bow their minds and submit 
their understandings to, it is no wonder that grown men, either perplexed 
in the necessary affairs of life, or hot in the pursuit of pleasures, should 
not seriously sit down to examine their own tenets ; especially when one 
of their principles is, that principles ought not to be questioned. And had 
men leisure, parts, and will, who is there almost that dare shake the foun- 
dations of all his past thoughts and actions, and endure to bring upon him- 
self the shame of having been a long time wholly in mistake and error? 
Who is there hardy enough to contend with the reproach which is every 
where prepared for those who dare venture to dissent from the received 
opinions of their country or party] And where is the man to be found 
that can patiently prepare himself to bear the name of whimsical, skeptical, 
or atheist, which he is sure to meet with, who does in the least scruple any 
of the common opinions % And he will be much more afraid to question 
those principles, when he shall think them, as most men do, the standards 
set up by God in his mind, to be the rule and touchstone of all other opin- 
ions. And what can hinder him from thinking them sacred, when he finds 
them the earliest of his own thoughts, and the most reverenced by others'? 

Sect. 26. It is easy to imagine how by these means it comes to pass 
that men worship the idols that have been setup in their minds ; grow fond 
of the notions they have long been acquainted with there ; and stamp the 
characters of divinity upon absurdities and errors ; become zealous votaries 
to bulls and monkeys ; and contend too, fight and die, in defence of their 
opinions ; " Dum solos credit habendos esse deos, quos ipse colit." For 
since the reasoning faculties of the soul, which are almost constantly, though 
not always warily nor wisely employed, would not know how to move, 
for want of a foundatian and footing, in most men; who, through laziness 
or avocation, do not, or for want of time, or true helps, or for other causes, 
cannot penetrate into the principles of knowledge, and trace truth to its 
fountain and original ; it is natural for them, and almost unavoidable, to 
take up with some borrowed principles : which being reputed and pre- 
sumed to be the evident proofs of other things, are thought not to need 
any other proof themselves. Whoever shall receive any of these into his 
mind, and entertain them there, with the reverence usually paid to prin- 
ciples, never venturing to examine them, but accustoming himself to believe 
them, because they are to be believed, may take up from his education, and 
the fashions of his country, any absurdity for innate principles ; and by long 
poring on the same objects, to dim his sight, as to take monsters lodged 
in his own brain for the images of the Deity, and the workmanship of hia 
hands. 



62 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Bookl. 

Sect. 27. Principles must be examined. — By this progress now many there 
are who arrive at principles winch they believe innate may be easily observ- 
ed, in the variety of opposite principles held and contended for by all sorts 
and degrees of men. And he that shad deny this to be the method where- 
in most men proceed to the assurance they have of the truth and evidence 
of their principles, will perhaps find it a hard matter any other way to ac- 
count for the contrary tenets which are firmly believed, confidently asserted, 
and which great numbers are ready at any time to seal with their blood. 
And, indeed, if it be the privilege of innate principles to be received upon 
their own authority, without examination, I know not what may not be believ- 
ed, or how any one's principles can be questioned. If they may and ought to 
be examined, and tried, I desire to know how first and innate principles 
can be tried ; or at least it is reasonable to demand the marks and charac- 
ters, whereby the genuine innate principles may be distinguished from 
others ; that so, amidst the great variety of pretenders, I may be kept from 
mistakes in so material a point as this. When this is done, I shall be 
ready to embrace such welcome and useful propositions ; and till then, I may 
with modesty doubt, since I fear universal consent, which is the only one 
produced, will scarce prove a sufficient mark to direct my choice and as- 
sure me of any innate principles. From what has been said, I think it 
past doubt that there are no practical principles wherein all men agree, 
and therefore none innate. 



CHAPTER IV. 



OTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING INNATE PRINCIPLES 
BOTH SPECULATIVE AND PRACTICAL. 

Sect. 1. Principles not innate, unless their ideas be innate. — Had 
those who would persuade us that there are innate principles, not taken 
them together in gross, but considered separately the parts out of which 
those propositions are made, they would not, perhaps, have been so for- 
ward to believe they were innate: since, if the ideas which made up those 
truths were not, it was impossible that the propositions made up of them 
should be innate, or the knowledge of them be born with us. For if the 
ideas be not innate, there was a time when the mind was without those 
principles ; and then they will not be innate, but be derived from some 
other original. For where the ideas themselves are not, there can be no 
knowledge, no assent, no mental or verbal propositions about them. 

Sect. 2. Ideas, especially those belonging to principles, not born with 
children. — If we will attentively consider new-born children, we shall have 
little reason to think that they bring many ideas into the world with them. 
For bating perhaps some faint ideas of hunger and thirst, and warmth, 
and some pains which they may have felt in the womb, there is not the 
least appearance of any settled ideas at all in them ; especially of ideas 
answering the terms which make up those universal propositions that are 
esteemed innate principles. One may perceive how, by degrees, after- 
ward, ideas come into their minds ; and that they get no more, nor no other 
than what experience, and the observation of things that come in their 
vvay, furnish them with : which might be enough to satisfy us that they 
are not original characters stamped on the mind. 

Sect. 3. " It is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be," is 
certainly (if there be any such) an innate principle. But can any one 
think, or will any one say, that impossibility and identity are two innate 
ideas? Are they such as all mankind have, and bring into the world wit); 



Ch. 4. NO INNATE PRINCIPLES. m 

them? And are those which are the first in children, and antecedent to 
all acquired ones? If they are innate, they must needs be so. Hath a 
child an idea of impossibility and identity before it has of white or black, 
sweet or bitter? And is it from the knowledge of this principle that it 
concludes, that wormwood rubbed on the nipple hath not the same taste 
that it used to receive from thence? Is it the actual knowledge of" im- 
possibile est idem esse, et non esse," that makes a child distinguish between 
its mother and a stranger? or that makes it fond of the one and flee the 
other? Or does the mindregulate itself and its assent by ideas that it never 
yet had ? or the understanding draw conclusions from principles which it 
never yet knew nor understood? The names impossibility and identity 
stand for two ideas, so far from being innate, or born with us, that I think 
it requires great care and attention to form them right in our understanding. 
They are so far from being brought into the world with us, so remote from 
the thoughts of infancy and childhood, that I believe, upon examination, it 
will be found that many grown men want them. 

Sect. 4. Identity, an idea not innate. — If identity (to instance in that 
alone) be a native impression, and consequently so clear and obvious to us, 
that we must needs know it even from our cradles, I would gladly be re- 
solved by one of seven, or seventy years old, whether a man, being a crea- 
ture, consisting of soul and body, be the same man when his body is chan- 
ged? Whether Euphorbus and Pythagoras, having had the same soul, 
were the same men, though they lived several ages asunder? Nay, 
whether the cock too, which had the same soul, were not the same with 
both of them? Whereby, perhaps, it will appear that our idea of sameness 
is not so settled and clear as to deserve to be thought innate in us. For 
if those innate ideas are not clear and distinct, so as to be universally 
known, and naturally agreed on, they cannot be subjects of universal and 
undoubted truths ; but will be the unavoidable occasion of perpetual un- 
certainty. For, I suppose, every one's idea of identity will not be the 
same that Pythagoras and others of his followers have : and which then 
shall be true ? Which innate ? Or are there two different ideas of identity, 
both innate? 

Sect. 5. Nor let any one think that the questions I have here proposed 
about the identity of man, are bare empty speculations ; which, if they were, 
would be enough to show that there was in the understandings of men no 
innate idea of identity. He that shall, with a little attention, reflect on 
the resurrection, and consider that divine justice will bring to judgment, 
at the last day, the very same persons, to be happy or miserable in the 
other, who did well or ill in this life, will find it perhaps not easy to resolve 
with himself what makes the same man, or wherein identity consists : and will 
not be forward to think he, and every one, even children themselves, have 
naturally a clear idea of it. 

Sect. 6. Whole and part not innate ideas. — Let us examine that prin- 
ciple of mathematics, viz. " that a whole is bigger than a part." This, 
I take it, is reckoned among innate principles. I am sure it has as good 
a title as any to be thought so ; which yet nobody can think it to be, when 
he considers the ideas it comprehends in it, " whole and part," are perfect- 
ly relative ; but the positive ideas, to which they properly and immediately 
belong, are extension and number, of which alone whole and part are re- 
lations. So that if whole and part are innate ideas, extension and number 
must be so too ; it being impossible to have an idea of a relation without 
having any at all of the thing to which it belongs, and in which it is found- 
ed. Now, whether the minds of men have naturally imprinted on them 
the ideas of extension and number, I leave to be considered by those who 
are the patrons of innate principles. 

Sect. 7. Ideas of worship not innate. — " That God is to be worshipped," 
'.s, without doubt as great a truth as any can enter into the mind of man, 



64 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 1 

and deserves the first place among all practical principles. But yet it can 
by no means be thought innate, unless the ideas of God and worship are 
innate. That the idea the term worship stands for is not in the understand- 
ing of children, and a character stamped on the mind in its first original, 1 
think, will be easily granted by any one that considers how few tbere be. 
among grown men, who have a clear and distinct notion of it. And, I 
suppose, there cannot be any thing more ridiculous than to say that 
children have this practical principle innate, "that God is to be worship- 
ed:" and yet that they know not what that worship of God is, which is 
heir duty. But to pass by this : 

Sect. 8. Idea of God not innate. — If any idea can be imagined innate, 
the idea of God may, of all others, for many reasons, be thought so ; since it 
s hard to conceive how there should be innate moral principles without an 
anate idea of a Deity: without a notion of a lawmaker, it is impossible to 
lave a notion of a law, and an obligation to observe it. Besides the 
atheists taken notice of among the ancients, and left branded upon the re- 
cords of history, hath not navigation discovered, in these later ages, whole 
nations, at the bay of Soldania(a), in Brazil(6), in Boranday(c), and in the 
Caribee islands, &c. among whom there was to be found no notion of a God, 
no religion ] Nicholaus del Techo in literis ex Paraquaria de Caaiguarum 
conversione, has these words(d): " Reperi earn gentem nullum nomen 
habere, quod Deum et hominis animam significet, nulla sacra habet, nulla 
idola." These are instances of nations where uncultivated nature has 
been left to itself, without the help of letters and discipline, and the im- 
provement of arts and sciences. But there are others to be found, who have 
enjoyed these in a very great measure, who yet, for want of a due application 
of their thoughts this way, want the idea and knowledge of God. It will, I 
doubt not, be a surprise to others, as it was to me, to find the Siamites of this 
number. But for this let them consult the king of France's late envoy 
thither(e), who gives no better account of the Chinese themselves (/). 
And if we will not believe La Loubere, the missionaries of China, even the 
Jesuits themselves, the great encomiasts of the Chinese, do all, to a man, 
agree, and will convince us that the sect of the literati, or learned, keeping 
to the old religion of China, and the ruling party there, are all of them 
atheists. [Vid. Navarette, in the collection of voyages, vol. i. and 
Historia cultus Sinensium.] And perhaps if we should, with attention, 
mind the lives and discourse of people not so far off, we should have too 
much reason to fear, that many in more civilized countries have no very 
strong and clear impressions of a Deity upon their minds; and that the com- 
plaints of atheism, made from the pulpit, are not without reason. And 
though only some profligate wretches own it too barefacedly now ; yet per- 
haps we should hear more than we do of it from others, did not the fear of 
the magistrate's sword, or their neighbour's censure, tie up people's 
tongues ; which, were the apprehensions of punishment or shame taken 
away, would as openly proclaim their atheism, as their lives do (g) 

(a) Roe apud Thevenot, p. 2. (b) Jo. de Lery, c. 16. 

c)Martiniere 2-&1. Terry v? and 23. Ovington 48! 5 

' 3 2^ 545 545 606 

(d) Relatio triplex de rebus Indicis Caaiguarum 43 

(e) La Loubere du Royaume du Siara, t. 1, c. 9, sect. 15, and c. 20, sect. 22, 
and c. 22, sect. 6. 

(/) lb. t. 1. c. 20, sect. 4, and c. 23. 

(g) On this reasoning of the author against innate ideas, great blame hath been 
laid ; because it seems to invalidate an argument commonly used to prove the 
being of a God, viz. universal consent: to which our author answers*, I think 
that the universal consent of mankind, as to the being of a God, amounts to thus 
much, that the vastly greater majority of mankind have, in all ages of the world, 

* In his third letter to the Bishop of Worcester. 



Ch. 4. NO INNATE PRINCIPLES. 65 

Sect. 9. But had all mankind, every where, a notion of a God, (whereof 
yet history tells us the contrary) it would not from thence follow that the 
idea of him was innate. For though no nation were to be found without a 
name, and some few dark notions of him, yet that would not prove them to 
be natural impressions on the mind, any more than the names of fire, or the 
sun, heat, or number, do prove the ideas they stand for to be innate, be- 
cause the names of those things, and the ideas of them, are so universally 
received and known among mankind. Nor, on the contrary, is the want 
of such a name, or the absence of such a notion, out of men's minds, any 
argument against the being of a God; any more than it would be a proof 
that there was no loadstone in the world, because a great part of mankind 
had neither a notion of any such thing, nor a name for it; or by any show 
of argument to prove, that there are no distinct and various species of 
angels or intelligent beings above us, because we have no ideas of such dis- 
tinct species, or names for them: for men being furnished with words, by 
the common language of their own countries, can scarce avoid having 
some kind of ideas of those things* whose names those they converse with 
have occasion frequently to mention to them. And if they carry with it 
the notion of excellency, greatness, or something extraordinary; if ap- 
prehension and concernment accompany it; if the fear of absolute and ir- 
resistible power set it on upon the mind, the idea is likely to sink the deeper, 
and spread the farther: especially if it be such an idea as is agreeable to the 
common light of reason, and naturally deducible from every part of our 
knowledge, as that of a God is. For the visible marks of extraordinary 
wisdom and power appear so plainly in all the works of the creation, that 
a rational creature, who will but seriously reflect on them, cannot miss the 
discovery of a Deity. And the influence that the discovery of such a being 
must necessarily have on the minds of all, that have but once heard of it, is 
so great, and carries such a weight of thought and communication with it, 
that it seems strange to me that a whole nation of men should be any 

actually believed a God ; that the majority of the remaining part have not 
actually disbelieved it ; and consequently those who have actually opposed the 
belief of a God have truly been very few. So that comparing those that have 
actually disbelieved, with those who have actually believed a God, their number 
is so inconsiderable, that in respect of this incomparably greater majority, of those 
who have owned the belief of a God, it may be said to be the universal consent 
< f mankind. 

This is all the universal consent which truth or matter of fact will allow ; and 
therefore all that can be made use of to prove a God. But if any one would ex- 
tend it farther, and speak deceitfully for God ; if this universality should be 
urged in a strict sense, not for much the majority, but for a general consent of 
every one, even to a man, in all ages and countries, this would make it either no 
argument, or a perfectly useless and unnecessary one. For if any one deny a God, 
such an universality of consent is destroyed ; and if nobody does deny a God, what 
need of arguments to convince atheists ? 

I would crave leave to ask you lordship, were there ever in the world any 
atheists or no ? If there were not, what need is there of raising a question about 
the being of a God, when nobody questions it ? What need of provisional argu- 
ments against a fault, from which mankind are so wholly free, and which by an 
universal consent, they may be presumed to be secure from ? If you say (as I 
doubt not but you will) that there have been atheists in the world, then your 
lordship's universal consent reduces itself to only a great majority ; and then 
make that majority as great as you will, what I have said in the place quoted by 
your lordship leaves it in its full force ; and I have not said one word that does 
in the least invalidate this argument for a God. The argument I was upon there, 
was to show, that the idea of God was not innate ; and to my purpose it was 
sufficient, if there were but a less number found in the world, who had no idea 
of God, than your loi 'ship will allow there have been of professed atheists ; for 
I 



66 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 1. 

where found so brutish as to want the notion of a God, than that they 
should be without any notion of numbers or fire. 

Sect. 10. The name of God being once mentioned in any part of the 
world, to express a superior, powerml, wise, invisible being, the suitable- 
ness of such a notion to the principles of common reason, and the interest 
men will always have to mention it often, must necessarily spread it far and 
wide, and continue it down to all generations; though yet the general re- 
ception of this name, and some imperfect and unsteady notions conveyed 
thereby to the unthinking part of mankind, prove not the idea to be innate ; 
but only that they who made the discovery had made a right use of their 
reason, thought maturely of the causes of things, and traced them to their 
original; from whom other less considering people, having once received so 
important a notion, it could not easily be lost again. 

Sect. 11. Tins is all could be inferred from the notion of a God, were 
it to be found universally in all the tribes of mankind, and generally 
acknowledged by men grown to maturity in all countries. For the 
generality of the acknowledging of a God, as I imagine, is extended no 
farther than that ; which if it be sufficient to prove the idea of God innate, 
will as well prove the idea of fire innate ; since, I think, it may be truly 
said, that there is not a person in the world, who has a notion of a God, 
who has not also the idea of fire. I doubt not, but if a colony of young 
children should be placed in an island where no fire was, they would 
certainly neither have any notion of such a thing, nor name for it ; how 
generally soever it were received and known in all the world besides : and 
perhaps too their apprehensions would be as far removed from any name 
or notion of a God, till some one among them had employed his thoughts 
to inquire into the constitution and causes of things, which would easily 
lead him to the notion of a God; which having once taught to others, rea- 
son, and the natural propensity of their own thoughts, would afterward pro- 
pagate and continue among them. 

■whatsoever is innate must be universal in the strictest sense. One exception is 
a sufficient proof against it. So that all that I said, and which was quite to ano- 
ther purpose, did not at all tend, nor can be made use of, to invalidate the argu- 
ment for a Deity, grounded on such an universal consent, as your lordship, and 
all that build on it, must own ; which is only a very disproportionate majority -, 
such an universal consent my argument there neither affirms nor requires to be 
less than you will be pleased to allow it. Your lordship therefore might, with- 
out any prejudice to those declarations of good-will and favour you have for the 
author of the "Essay of Human Understanding," have spared the mentioning 
lii s quoting authors that are in print, for matters of fact to quite another purpose, 
"as going about to invalidate the argument for a Deity, from the universal con- 
sent of mankind; since he leaves that universal consent as entire and as large 
as you yourself do, or can own, or suppose it. But here I have no reason to be 
sorry that your lordship has given me this occasion for the vindication of this 
passage of my book ; if there should be any one besides your lordship, who 
should so far mistake it, as to think it in the least invalidates the argument for a 
God, from the universal consent of mankind. 

But because you question the credibility of those authors Ihave quoted, which 
you say were very ill-chosen, I will crave leave to say, that he whom I relied on 
for his testimony concerning the Hottentots of Soldania, was no less a man than 
an ambassador from the king of England to the Great Mogul ; of whose rela- 
tion, Monsieur Thevenot, no ill judge in the case, had so great an esteem, 
that he .was at the pains to translate into French and publish it in his 
(which is counted no injudicious) Collection of Travels. But to intercede with 
your lordship for a little more favourable allowance of credit to Sir Thomas 
Hoe's relation ; Coore, an inhabitant of the country, who could speak English, 
assured Mr Terry*, that they of Soldania had no God. But if he, too, have the 

* Terry's Voyage, p. 17, 23. 



Ch. 4. NO INNATE PRINCIPLES. 67 

Sect. 12. Suitable to God's goodness, that all men should have an 
idea of him, therefore naturally imprinted by him, answered. — Indeed 
it is urged, that it is suitable to the goodness of God to imprint upon the 
minds of men characters and' notions of himself, and not to leave them m 
the dark and doubt in so grand a concernment ; and also by that means to 
secure to himself the homage and veneration due from go intelligent a 
creature as man ; and therefore he has done it. 

This argument, if it be of any force, will prove much more than those 
who use it in this case expect from it. For if we may conclude that God 
hath done for men all that men shall judge is best for them, because it is 
suitable to his goodness so to do ; it will prove not only that God has im- 
printed on the minds of men an idea of himself, but that he hath plainly 
stamped there, in fair characters, all that men ought to know or believe of 
him, all that they ought to do in obedience to his will ; and that he hath 
given them a will and affections conformable to it. This, no doubt, every 
one will think better for men, than that they should in the dark grope after 
knowledge, as St Paul tells us all nations did after God, Acts xvii. 27, 
than that their wills should clash with their understandings, and their ap- 
petites cross their duty. The Romanists say, it is best for men, and so 
suitable to the goodness of God, that there should be an infallible judge of 
controversies on earth; and therefore there is one. And I, by the same 
reason say, it is better for men that every man himself should be infallible. 
I leave them to consider, whether by the force of this argument they 
shall think that every man is so. I think it a very good argument to say, 
the infinitely wise God hath made it so ; and therefore it is best. But it 

ill lack to find no credit with you, I hope you will be a little more favourable to 
a divine of the church of England, now living, and admit of his testimony in 
confirmation of Sir Thomas Roe's. This worthy gentleman, in the relation 
of his voyage to Surat, printed but two years since, speaking of the same 
people, has these words*: "They are sunk even below idolatry, are desti- 
tute of both priest and temple, and, saving a little show of rejoicing, which 
is made at the full and new moon, have lost all kin J of religious devotion. 
Xature has so richly provided for their convenience in this life, that they have 
drowned all sense of the God of it, and are grown quite careless of the next." 

But to provide against the clearest evidence of atheism in these people, you 
say, " that the account given of them makes them not fit to be a standard 
for the sense of mankind." This, I think, may pass for nothing, till some- 
body be found that makes tfiem to be a standard for the sense of mankind. 
All the use I made t>f them was to show, that there were men in the world 
that had no innate idea of a God. But to keep something like an argument 
going, (for what will not that do ?) you go near denying those Cafers to be men. 
AVhat else do these words signify? "A people so strangely bereft of common 
sense, that they can hardly be reckoned among mankind, as appears by the 
best accounts of the Cafers of Soldania, ccc." I hope, if any of them were 
called Peter, James, or John, it would be past scruple that they were men : 
however, Courwee, Wewena, and Cowsheda, and those others who had names, 
that had no places in your nomenclator, would hardly pass muster with your 
lordship. 

My Lord, I should not mention this, but that what you yourself say here, 
may be a motive to you to consider, that what you have laid such stress on 
concerning the general nature of man, as a real being, and the subject of proper- 
ties, amounts to nothing for the distinguishing of species ; since you yourself own, 
that there may be individuals, wherein there is a common nature with a parti- 
cular subsistence proper to each of them ; whereby you are so little able to know 
of which of the ranks or sorts they are, into which you say God has ordered be- 
ings, aud which he hath distinguished, by essential properties, that you are in 
doubt whether they ought to be reckoned among mankind or no. 

* Mr Ovington, p. 489. 



68 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book j 

seems tome a little too much confidence of our own wisdom to say, "I 
think it best, and therefore God hath made it so;" and, in the matter in 
hand, it will be in vain to arg-ue from such a topic that God hath done so, 
when certain experience shows us that he hath not. But the goodness o! 
God hath not been wanting to men without such original impressions of 
knowledge, or ideas stamped on the mind : since he hath furnished man 
with those faculties, which will serve for the sufficient discovery of all 
things requisite to the end of such a being. And I doubt not but to show 
that a man, by the right use of his natural abilities, may, without any innate 
principles, attain a knowledge of a God, and other things that concern him. 
God having endued man with those faculties of knowing which he hath, was 
no more obliged by his goodness to plant those innate notions in his mind, 
than that, having given him reason, hands, and materials, he should build 
him bridges or houses ; which some people in the world, however of good 
parts, do either totally want, or are but ill provided of, as well as others 
are wholly without ideas of God, and principles of morality; or at least 
have but very ill ones. The reason in both cases being, that they never 
employed their parts, faculties, and powers industriously that way, but con- 
tented themselves with the opinions, fashions, and things of their country, 
as they found them, without looking any farther. Had you or I been born 
at the bay of Soldania, possibly our thoughts and notions had not exceeded 
those brutish ones of the Hottentots that inhabit there : and had the Virginia 
king Apochancana been educated in England, he had been, perhaps, as 
knowing a divine, and as good a mathematician, as any in it. The differ- 
ence between him and a more improved Englishman lying barely in this, 
that the exercise of his faculties was bounded within the ways, modes, and 
notions of his own country, and never directed to any other or farther in- 
quiries ; and if he had not any idea of a God, it was only because he pur- 
sued not those thoughts that would have led him to it. 

Sect. 13. Ideas of God various in different men. — I grant that if there 
were any idea to be found imprinted on the minds of men, we have reason 
to expect it should be the notion of his Maker, as a mark God set on his 
own workmanship, to mind man of his dependence and duty ; and that here- 
in should appear the first instances of human knowledge. But how late is 
it before any such notion is discoverable in children'? And when we find 
it there, how much more does it resemble the opinion and notion of the 
teacher, than represent the true God ? He that shall observe in children 
the progress whereby their mmds attain the knowledge they have, will think 
that the objects they do first and most familiarly converse with, are those that 
make the first impressions on their understandings ; nor will he find the 
least footsteps of any other. It is easy to take notice how their thoughts 
enlarge themselves, only as they come to be acquainted with a greater 
variety of sensible objects, to retain the ideas of them in their memories; 
and to get the skill to compound and enlarge them, and several ways put 
them together. How by these means they come to frame in their minds 
an idea men have of a Deity I shall hereafter show. 

Sect. 14. Can it be thought that the ideas men have of God are the 
characters and marks of himself, engraven on their minds by his own fin- 
ger, when we see that in the same country, under one and the same name, 
men have far different, nay, often contrary and inconsistent ideas and 
conceptions of him 1 Their agreeing in a name or sound, will scarce 
prove an innate notion of him. 

Sect. 15. What true or tolerable notion of a Deity could they have, 
who acknowledged and worshipped hundreds'? Every deity that they 
owned above one was an infallible evidence of their ignorance of him, and 
a proof that they had no true notion of God, where unity, infinity, and 
eternity, were excluded. To which, if we add tiieir gross conceptions of 
corporeity, expressed in their images and representations of their deities ; 



Ch. 4. NO INNATE PRINCIPLES. 69 

the amours, marriages, copulations, lusts, quarrels, and other mean qualities 
attributed by them to their gods ; we shall have little reason to think, that 
the heathen world, i. e. the greatest part of mankind, had such ideas of 
God in their minds, as he himself, out of care that they should not be mis- 
taken about him, was author of. And this universality of consent, so 
much argued, if it prove any native impressions, it will be only this, 
that God imprinted on the minds of all men, speaking the same language, 
a name for himself, but not any idea : since those people, who agreed in 
the name, had at the same time far different apprehensions about the 
thing signified. If they say, that the variety of deities worshipped by the 
heathen world were but figurative ways of expressing the several attributes 
of that incomprehensible being, or several parts of his providence ; I an- 
swer, what they might be in their original I will not here inquire ; but that 
they were so in the thoughts of the vulgar, I think nobody will affirm. 
And he that will consult the voyage of the bishop of Beryte. c. 13, (not to 
mention other testimonies) will find that the theology of the Siamites 
professedly owns a plurality of gods : or as the Abbe de Choisy more judi- 
ciously remarks, in his Journal du Voyage de Siam, \yj, it consists properly 
in acknowledging no God at all. 

If it be said, that wise men of all nations came to have true conceptions 
of the unity and infinity of the Deity, I grant it. But then this, 

First, Excludes universality of consent in any thing but the name ; for 
those wise men being very few, perhaps one of a thousand, this universality 
is very narrow. 

Secondly, It seems to me plainly to prove, that the truest and best no- 
tions men had of God, were not imprinted, but acquired by thoug-ht and 
meditation, and a right use of their faculties : since the wise and considerate 
men of the world, by a right and careful employment of their thoughts and 
reason, attained true notions in this, as well as other things ; whilst the 
lazy and inconsiderate part of men, making far the greater number, took 
up their notions by chance, from common tradition and vulgar conceptions, 
without much beating their heads about them. And if it be a reason to 
think the notion of God innate, because all wise men had it, virtue, too, 
must be innate, for that also wise men have always had. 

Sect. 16. This was evidently the case of all Gentilism : nor hath even 
among Jews, Christians, and Mahometans, who acknowledge but one God, 
this doctrine, and the care taken in those nations to teach men to have true 
notions of a God, prevailed so far as to make men to have the same and the 
true ideas of him. How many, even among us, will be found, upon inquiry, to 
fancy him in the shape of a man sitting in heaven ; and to have many other ab- 
surd and unfit conceptions of him] Christians, as well as Turks, have had 
whole sects owning and contending earnestly for it, and that the Deity 
was corporeal, and of human shape : and though we find few among us 
who profess themselves anthropomorphites, (though some I have met with 
that own it) yet, I believe, he that will make it his business, may find among 
the ignorant and uninstructed Christians, many of that opinion. Talk but 
with country people, of almost any age, or young people of almost any 
condition ; and you shall find, that though the name of God be frequently 
in their mouths, yet the notions they apply this name to are so odd, low, 
and pitiful, that nobody can imagine they were taught by a rational man, 
much less that they were characters written by the finger of God himself. 
Nor do I see how it derogates more from the goodness of God, that he has 
given us minds unfurnished with these ideas of himself, than that he hath 
sent us into the world with bodies unclothed, and that there is no art or 
skill born with us : for, being fitted with faculties to attain these, it is want 
of industry and consideration in us, and not of bounty in him, if we have 
them not. It is as certain that there is a God, as that the opposite angles, 



70 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 1 

made by the intersection of two strait lines, are equal. There was never 
any rational creature, that set himself sincerely to examine the truth ot 
these propositions, that could fail to assent to them; though yet it be past 
doubt that there are many men, who, having not applied their thoughts 
that way, are ignorant both of the one and the other. If any one think 
fit to call this, (which is the utmost of its extent) universal consent, such 
an one I easily allow ; but such an universal consent as this, proves, not the 
idea of God, any more than it does the idea of such angles, innate. 

Sect. 17. If the idea of God be not innate, no other can be supposed in- 
nate. — Since, then, though the knowledge of a God be the most natural 
discovery of human reason, yet the idea of him is not innate, as, I think, 
is evident from what has been said ; I imagine there will scarcely be another 
idea found, that can pretend to it: since, if God hath set any impression, 
any character, on the understanding of men, it is most reasonable to expect 
it should have been some clear and uniform idea of himself, as far as our weak 
capacities were capable to receive so incomprehensible and infinite an ob- 
ject. But our minds being at first void of that idea, which we are most 
concerned to have, it is a strong presumption against all other innate char- 
acters. I must own, as far as I can observe, I can find none, and would 
be glad to be informed by any other. 

Sect. 18. Idea of substance not innate. — I confess there is another idea, 
which would be of general use for mankind to have, as it is of general 
talk, as if they had it; and that is the idea of substance, which we neither have, 
nor can have, by sensation or reflection. If nature took care to provide 
us any ideas, we might well expect they should be such as by our own 
faculties we cannot procure to ourselves ; but we see, on the contrary, that 
since by those ways, whereby our ideas are brought into our minds, this 
is not, we have no such clear idea at all, and therefore signify nothing by 
the word substance, but only an uncertain supposition of we know not 
what, i. e. of something whereof we have no particular distinct positive 
idea, which we take to be the substratum, or support, of those ideas we 
know. 

Sect. 19. No propositions can be innate, since no ideas are innate. — 
Whatever then we talk of innate, either speculative or practical, principles, 
it may, with as much probability, be said, that a man hath 100Z. sterling in 
his pocket, and yet denied that he hath either penny, shilling, crown, or any 
other coin out of which the sum is to be made up, as to think that certain 
propositions are innate, when the ideas about which they are, can by no 
means be supposed to be so. The general reception and assent that is 
given doth not at all prove that the ideas expressed in them are innate : 
for in many cases, however the ideas came there, the assent to words, 
expressing the agreement or disagreement of such ideas, will necessarily 
follow. Every one, that hath a true idea of God and worship, will assent 
to this proposition, " that God is to be worshipped," when expressed in a 
language he understands : and every rational man, that hath not thought 
on it to-day, may be ready to assent to this proposition to-morrow ; and 
yet millions of men may be well supposed to want one or both those ideas 
to-day. For if we will allow savages and most country people to have 
ideas of God and worship, (which conversation with them will not make 
one forward to believe,) yet I think few children can be supposed to have 
those ideas, which therefore they must begin to have some time or other : 
and then they will begin to assent to that proposition, and make very lit- 
tle question of it ever after. But such an assent upon hearing, no more 
proves the ideas to be innate, than it does that one born blind (with cataracts, 
which will be couched to-morrow) had the innate ideas of the sun, or 
light, or saffron, or yellow; because, when his sight is cleared, he will cer- 
tainly assent to this proposition, " that the sun is lucid, or that saffron is 
yellow;" and, therefore, if such an assent upon hearing cannot prove the 



Ch. 4. NO INNATE PRINCIPLES. 71 

ideas innate, it can much less the propositions made up of those ideas. 
If they ha.ve any innate ideas, I would be glad to be told what, and how 
many, they are. 

Sect. 20. No innate ideas in the memory. — To which let me add: if 
there be any innate ideas, any ideas in the njind, which the mind does not 
actually think on, they must be lodged in the memory, and from thence must 
be brought into view by remembrance : i. e. must be known, when they 
are remembered to have been perceptions in the mind before, unless remem- 
Drance can be without remembrance. For to remember is to perceive any 
thing with memory, or with a consciousness that it was known or perceived 
before : without this, whatever idea comes into the mind is new, and not re- 
membered ; this consciousness of its havingbeen in the mind before, being that 
which distinguishes remembering from all other ways of thinking. What- 
ever idea was never perceived by the mind was never in the mind. What- 
ever idea is in the mind, is either an actual perception, or else, having been 
an actual preception, is so in the mind, that by the memory It can be made 
an actual perception again. Whenever there is the actual perception of 
an idea without memory, the idea appears perfectly new and unknown 
before to the understanding. Whenever the memory brings any idea into 
actual view, it is with a consciousness that it had been there before, and 
was not wholly a stranger to the mind. Whether this be not so, I appeal 
to every one's observation ; and then I desire an instance of an idea, pre- 
tended to be innate, which (before any impression of it, by ways hereafter 
to be mentioned) any one could revive and remember as an idea he had 
formerly known; without which consciousness of a former perception 
there is no remembrance ; and whatever idea comes into the mind without 
that consciousness, is not remembered, or comes not out of the memory, nor 
can be said to be in the mind before that appearance : for /what is not either 
actually in view, or in the memory, is in the mind no way at all, and is all one 
as if it had never been there. Suppose a child had the use of his eyes, till 
he knows and distinguishes colours ; but then cataracts shut the windows, 
and he is forty or fifty years perfectly in the dark, and in that time per- 
fectly loses all memory of the ideas of colours he once had. This was the 
case of a blind man I once talked with, who lost his sight by the small-pox 
when he was a child, and had no more notion of colours than one born blind. 
I ask, whether any one can say this man had then any ideas of colours in his 
mind, any more than one born blind'? And I think nobody will say that 
either of them had in his mind any idea of colours at all. His cataracts are 
couched, and then he has the ideas (which he remembers not) of colours, 
de novo, by his restored sight, conveyed to his mind, and that without any 
consciousness of a former acquaintance : and these now he can revive and 
call to mind in the dark. In this case all these ideas of colours, which 
when out of view can be revived with a consciousness of a former acquain- 
tance, being thus in the memory, are said to be in the mind. The 
use I make of this is, that whatever idea, being not actually in view, is in 
the mind, is there only by being in the memory ; and if it be not in the 
memory, it is not in the mind ; and if it be in the memory, it cannot by the 
memoiy be brought into actual view, without a perception that it comes 
out of the memory; which is this, that it had been known before, and is 
now remembered. If, therefore, there be any innate ideas, they must be in 
the memory, or else no where in the mind; and if they be in the memory, 
they can be revived without any impression from without ; and whenever 
they are brought into the mind, they are remembered, i. e. they bring with 
them a perception of their not being wholly new to it. This being a con- 
stant and distinguishing difference between what is, and what is not in 
the memory, or in the mind ; that what is not in the memory, whenever it 
appears there, appears perfectly new and unknown before ; and what is in the 
memory, or in the mind, whenever it is suggested by the memory, appears not 



72 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 1. 

to be new, but the mind finds it in itself, and knows it was there before. 
By this it may be tried, whether there be any innate ideas in die mind, be- 
fore impression from sensation or reflection. I would fain meet with the 
man who, when he came to the use of reason, or at any other time, re- 
membered any one of them ; and to whom, after he was born, they were 
never new. If any one will say, there are ideas in the mind that are not 
in the memory, I desire him to explain himself, and make what he says 
intelligible. 

Sect. 21. Principles not innate, because of little use, or little cer- 
tainty. — Besides what I have already said, there is another reason why I 
doubt that neither these nor any other principles are innate. I that am 
fully persuaded that the infinitely wise God made all things in perfect 
wisdom, cannot satisfy myself why he should be supposed to print upon the 
minds of men some universal principles ; whereof those that are pretended 
innate, and concern speculation, are of no great use ; and those that con- 
cern practice not self evident : and neither of them distinguishable from 
some other truths, not allowed to be innate. For to what purpose should 
characters be graven on the mind by the finger of God, which are not 
clearer there than those which are afterwards introduced, or cannot be distin- 
guished from them'? If any one thinks there are such innate ideas and pro- 
positions, which by their clearness and usefulness are distinguishable from 
all that is adventitious in the mind, and acquired, it will not be a hard 
matter for him to tell us which they are, and then every one will be a fit 
judge whether they be so or no ; since if there be such innate ideas and im- 
pressions, plainly different from all other perceptions and knowiedge, 
every one will find it true in himself. Of the evidence of these supposed 
innate maxims I have spoken already ; of their usefulness I shall have oc- 
casion to speak more hereafter. 

Sect. 22. Difference of men's discoveries depends upon the different 
application of their faculties.— Ho conclude : some ideas forwardly offer 
themselves to all men's understandings ; some sorts of truth result from any 
ideas, as soon as the mind puts them into propositions; other truths require 
a train of ideas placed in order, a due comparing of them, and deductions 
made with attention, before they can be discovered and assented to. 
Some of the first sort, because of their general and easy reception, have 
been mistaken for innate ; but the truth is, ideas and notions are no more 
born with us than arts and sciences, though some of them indeed offer 
themselves to our faculties more readily than others, and therefore are more 
generally received ; though that too be according as the organs of our 
bodies and powers of our minds happen to be employed : God having fitted 
men with faculties and means to discover, receive, and retain truths, ac- 
cording as they are employed. The great difference that is to be found 
in the notions of mankind is from the different use they put their faculties 
to ; whilst some (and those the most) taking things upon trust, misem- 
ploy their power of assent, by lazily enslaving their minds to the dictates 
and dominion of others in doctrines, which it is their duty carefully to ex- 
amine, and not blindly, with an implicit faith, to swallow ; others, employ- 
ing their thoughts only about some few things, grow acquainted sufficiently 
with them, attain great degrees of knowledge in them, and are ignorant of 
all other, having never let their thoughts loose in the search of other in- 
quiries. Thus, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones, 
is a truth as certain as any thing can be, and I think more evident than 
many of those propositions that go for principles ; and yet there are millions, 
however expert in other things, who know not this at ail, because they 
never set their thoughts on work about such angles ; and he that certainly 
knows this proposition, may yet be utterly ignorant of the truth of other pro- 
positions, in mathematics itself, which are as clear and evident as this, be- 
cause, in his search of those mathematical truths, he stopped his thoughts 



Ch. 4. NO INNATE PRINCIPLES. 73 

short, and went not so far. The same may happen concerning the notions 
we have of the being of a Deity ; for though there be no truth which a man 
may more evidently make out to himself than the existence of a God, yet 
he that shall content himself with things as he finds them, in this world, 
as they minister to his pleasures and passions, and not make inquiry a little 
farther into the causes, ends, and admirable contrivances, and pursue the 
thoughts thereof with diligence and attention, may live long without any 
notion of such a being. And if any person hath by talk put such a notion 
into his head, he may perhaps believe it ; but if he hath never examined it, 
his knowledge of it will be no perfecter than his, who having been told that 
the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones, takes it upon 
trust, without examining the demonstration ; and may yield his assent as a 
probable opinion, but hath no knowledge of the truth of it ; which yet his 
faculties, if carefully employed, were able to make clear and evident to 
him. But this only by the by, to show how much our knowledge depends 
upon the right use of those powers nature hath bestowed upon us, and how 
little upon such innate principles, as are in vain supposed to be in all man- 
kind for their direction ; which all men could not but know, if they were 
there, or else they would be there to no purpose ; and which, since all men 
do not know, nor can distinguish from other adventitious truths, we may 
well conclude there are no such. 

Sect. 23. Men must think and know for themselves. — What censure, 
doubting thus of innate principles, may deserve from men, who will be apt 
to call it pulling up the old foundations of knowledge and certainty, I can- 
not tell ; I persuade myself, at least, that the way I have pursued, being 
conformable to truth, lays those foundations surer. This, I am certain, I 
nave not made it my business either to quit or follow any authority m the 
ensuing discourse : truth has been my only aim, and wherever that has ap- 
peared to lead, my thoughts have impartially followed, without minding 
whether the footsteps of any other lay that way or no. Not that I want a 
due respect to other men's opinions ; but after all, the greatest reverence is 
due to truth : and I hope it will not be thought arrogance to say that per- 
haps we should make greater progress in the discovery of rational and con- 
templative knowledge if we sought it in the fountain, in the consideration 
of things themselves, and made use rather of our own thoughts than other 
men's to find it; for I think we may as rationally hope to see with other 
men's eyes, as to know by other men's understandings. So much as we 
ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so much we pos- 
sess of real and true knowledge. The floating of other men's opinions in 
our brains makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to 
be true. What in them was science, is in us but opiniatrety ; whilst we 
give up our assent only to reverend names, and do not, as they did, employ 
our own reason to understand those truths which gave them reputation. 
Aristotle was certainly a knowing man, but nobody ever thought him so, 
because he blindly embraced, and confidently vented, the opinions of another. 
And if the taking up of another's principles, without examining them, made 
not him a philosopher, I suppose it will hardly make any body else so. In 
the sciences, every one has so much as he really knows and comprehends; 
what he believes only, and takes upon trust, are but shreds ; which, how- 
ever well in the whole piece, make no considerable addition to his stock who 
gathers them. Such borrowed wealth, like fairy-money, though it were 
gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves and dust 
when it comes to use. 

Sect. 24. Whence the opinion of innate principles. — When men have 
found some general propositions, that could not be doubted of as soon as 
'■nderstood, it was, I know, a short and easy way to conclude them innate. 
This being once received, it sased the lazy from the pains of search, and 
stopped the inquiry of the doubtful concerning all that was once styled in- 
K 



74 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 1 

nate. And it was of no small advantage to those who affected to be 
masters and teachers, to make this the principle of principles, " that princi- 
ples must not be questioned:" for having' once established this tenet, that 
there are innate principles, it put their followers upon a necessity of receiv- 
ing- some doctrines as such ; which was to take them off from the use of 
their own reason and judgment, and put them upon believing and taking 
them upon trust, without farther examination : in which posture of blind 
credulity they might be more easily governed by, and made useful to, some 
sort of men, who had the skill and office to principle and guide them. Not- 
is it a small power it gives one man over another, to have the authority to 
be the dictator of principles, and teacher of unquestionable truths ; and to 
make a man swallow that for an innate principle which may serve to his 
purpose who teacheth them ; whereas, had they examined the ways where- 
by men came to the knowledge of many universal truths, they would have 
found them to result in the minds of men, from the being of things them- 
selves, when duly considered; and that they were discovered by the appli- 
cation of those faculties that were fitted by nature to receive and judge of 
them, when duly employed about them. 

Sect. 25. Conclusion. — To show how the understanding proceeds here- 
in, is the design of the following discourse ; which I shall proceed to, when 
I have first premised, that hitherto, to clear my way to those foundations 
which I conceive are the only true ones whereon to establish those notions 
we can have of our own knowledge, it hath been necessary for me to give 
an account of the reasons I had to doubt of innate principles. And since 
the arguments which are against them do some of them rise from common 
received opinions, I have been forced to take several things for granted, 
which is hardly avoidable to any one, whose task it is to show the false- 
hood or improbability of any tenet : it happening in controversial discourses 
as it does in assaulting of towns, where, if the ground be but firm whereon 
the batteries are erected, there is no farther inquiry of whom it is borrow- 
ed, nor whom it belongs to, so it affords but a fit rise for the present pur- 
pose. But in the future part of this discourse, designing to raise an edifice 
uniform and consistent with itself, as far as my own experience and obser- 
vation will assist me, I hope to erect it on such a basis, that I shall not 
need to shore it up with props and buttresses, leaning on borrowed or 
begged foundations ; or at least, if mine prove a castle in the air, I will 
endeavour it shall be all of a piece, and hang together. Wherein I warn 
the reader not to expect undeniable cogent demonstrations, unless I may be 
allowed the privilege, not seldom assumed by others, to take my princi- 
ciples for granted; and then, I doubt not, but I can demonstrate too. All 
that I shall say for the principles I proceed on, is, that I can only appeal to 
men's own unprejudiced experience and observation, whether they be true 
or no ; and this is enough for a man who professes no more than to lay 
down candidly and freely his own conjectures concerning a subject lying 
somewhat in the dark, without any other design than an unbiassed inquiry 
after truth. 



f!h. I. OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 75 

BOOK II. 

OF IDEAS. 
CHAPTER I. 

OF IDEAS IN GENERAL, AND THEIR ORIGINAL. 

Sect. 1. Idea is the object of thinking. — Every man being conscious 
to himself that he thinks, and that which his mind is applied about whilst 
thinking, being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt, that men have in 
their minds several ideas, such as are those expressed by the words white- 
ness, hardness, sweetness, thinking, motion, man, elephant, army, drun- 
kenness, and others. It is in the first place then to be inquired, how he 
comes by them. I know it is a received doctrine, that men have native ideas 
and original characters stamped upon their minds in their very first being. 
This opinion I have, at large, examined already ; and I suppose, what I 
have said, in the foregoing book, will be much more easily admitted, when 
I have shown whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has, and 
by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind ; for which I shall 
appeal to every one's own observation and experience. 

Sect. 2. Allideas come from sensation or reflection. — Letusthen suppose 
the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any 
ideas ; how comes it to be furnished 1 Whence comes it by that vast store 
which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with an 
almost endless variety ] Whence has it all the materials of reason and 
knowledge ] To this I answer in one word, from experience ; in that all 
our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our 
observation employed either about external sensible objects, or about the 
internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, 
is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking. 
These two are the fountains of knowledge, from whence all the ideas we 
have, or can naturally have, do spring. 

Sect. 3. The objects of sensation one source of ideas. — First, Our 
senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind 
several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways 
wherein those objects do affect them : and thus we come by those ideas 
we have of yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet, and all 
those which we call sensible qualities; which, when I say the senses con- 
vey into the mind, I mean, they, from external objects, convey into the mind 
what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most of the 
ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to 
the understanding, I call sensation. 

Sect. 4. The operations of our minds the other source of them. — 
Secondly, The other fountain from which experience furnisheth the un- 
derstanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own mind 
within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got, which operations, 
when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the under- 
standing with another set of idea, which could not be had from things with- 
out ; and such are preception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, 
knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds ; which we 
being conscious of and observingin ourselves, do from these receive into our 
understandings as distinct ideas, as we do from bodies affecting our senses. 



76 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be 
not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like 
it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the 
other sensation, so I call this, reflection, the ideas it affords being such 
only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself By 
reflection, then, in the following part of this discourse, I would be under- 
stood to mean that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and 
the manner of them ; by reason whereof there come to be ideas of these 
operations in the understanding. These two, I say, viz. external material 
things, as the objects of sensation and the operations of our own minds with- 
in, as the objects of reflection ; are to me the only originals from whence 
all our ideas take their beginnings. The term operations here I use in a 
large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about 
its ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them, such as is 
the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought. 

Sect. 5. All our ideas are of the one or the other of these. — The un- 
derstanding seems to me not to have the least glimmering of any ideas, 
which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish 
the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different 
perceptions they produce in us : and the mind furnishes the understand- 
ing with ideas of its own operations. 

These, when we have taken a full survey of them and their several 
modes, combinations, and relations, we shall find to contain all our whole 
stock of ideas ; and that we have nothing in our minds which did not come 
in one of these two ways. Let any one examine his own thoughts, and 
thoroughly search into his understanding ; and then let him tell me, whe- 
ther all the original ideas he has there are any other than of the objects of 
his senses, or of the operations of his mind, considered as objects of his re- 
flection ; and how great a mass of knowledge soever he imagines to be lodg- 
ed there, he will, upon taking a strict view, see that he has not any idea in 
his mind, but what one of these two have imprinted ; though perhaps with 
infinite variety compounded and enlarged by the understanding, as we shall 
see hereafter. 

Sect. 6. Observable in children. — He that attentively considers the 
state of a child, at his first coming into the world, will have little reason to 
think him stored with plenty of ideas, that are to be the matter of his future 
knowledge : it is by degrees he comes to be furnished with them. And 
though the ideas of obvious and familiar qualities imprint themselves before 
the memory begins to keep a register of time or order, yet it is often so late 
before some unusual qualities come in the way, that there are few men that 
cannot recollect the beginning of their acquaintance with them ; and if it 
were worth while, no doubt a child might be so ordered as to have but a 
very few even of the ordinary ideas, till he were grown up to a man. But 
all that are born into the world being surrounded with bodies that per- 
petually and diversely affect them, variety of ideas, whether care be taken 
of it or no, are imprinted on the minds of children. Light and colours are 
busy at hand every where, when the eye is but open ; sounds and some 
tangible qualities fail not to solicit their proper senses, and force an entrance 
to the mind ; but yet, I think, it will be granted easily, that if a child were 
kept in a place where he never saw any other but black and white till he 
were a man, he would have no more ideas of scarlet or green, than he that 
from his childhood never tasted an oyster or a pine-apple has of those par- 
ticular relishes. 

Sect. 7. Men are differently furnished with these, according to the 
different objects they converse with. — Men then come to be furnished 
with fewer or more simple ideas from without, according as the objects they 
converse with afford greater or less variety ; and from the operations of 
their minds within, according as they more or less reflect on them. Foi 



Ch. 1. THE ORIGINAL OF OUR IDEAS. 77 

though ne that contemplates the operations of his mind cannot but have plain 
and clear ideas of them ; yet, unless he turns his thoughts that way, and con- 
siders them attentively, he will no more have clear and distinct ideas of all 
the operations of his mind, and all that may be observed therein, than he will 
have all the particular ideas of any landscape, or of the parts and motions 
of a clock, who will not turn his eyes to it, and with attention heed all the 
parts of it. The picture or clock may be so placed, that they may come in 
his way every day ; but yet he will have but a confused idea of all the parts 
they are made up of, till he applies himself with attention to consider them 
each in particular. 

Sect. 8. Ideas of reflection later, because they need attention. — And 
hence we see the reason, why it is pretty late before most children get ideas 
of the operations of their own minds : and some have not any very clear or 
perfect ideas of the greatest part of them all their lives : because, though they 
pass there continually, yet, like floating visions, they make not deep impres- 
sions enough to leave in the mind clear, distinct, lasting ideas, till the un- 
derstanding turns inward upon itself, reflects on its own operations, and 
makes them the objects ofits own contemplation. Children, when they come 
first into it, are surrounded with a world of new things, which, by a con- 
stant solicitation of their senses, draw the mind constantly to them, forward 
to take notice of new, and apt to be delighted with the variety of changing 
objects. Thus the first years are usually employed and diverted in looking 
abroad. Men's business in them is to acquaint themselves with what is 
to be found without: and so growing up in a constant attention to outward 
sensation, seldom make any considerable reflection on what passes within 
them, until they come to be of riper years; and some scarce ever at all. 

Sect. 9. The soul begins to have ideas, when it begins to perceive. — 
To ask at what time a man has first any ideas, is to ask when he begins to 
perceive] having ideas, and perception, being the same thing. I know it 
is an opinion, that the soul always thinks, and that it has the actual per- 
ception of ideas in itself constantly, as long as it exists ; and that actual 
thinking is as inseparable from the soul as actual extension is from the 
Dody; which, if true, to inquire after the beginning of a man's ideas is the 
same as to inquire after the beginning of his soul : for by this account soul 
and its ideas, as body and its extension, will begin to exist both at the 
same time. 

Sect. 10. The soul thinks not always, for this wants proof — But 
whether the soul be supposed to exist antecedent, to, or coeval with, or some 
time after the first rudiments of organization, or the beginnings of life in 
the body, I leave to be disputed by those who have better thought of that 
matter. I confess myself to have one of those dull souls, that doth not per- 
ceive itself always to contemplate ideas, nor can conceive it any more ne- 
cessary for the soul always to think, than for the body always to move ; the 
perception of ideas being (as I conceive) to the soul, what motion is to the 
body, not its essence, but one of its operations. And, therefore, though 
thinking be supposed ever so much the proper action of the soul, yet it is 
not necessary to suppose that it should be always thinking, always in ac- 
tion. That, perhaps, is the privilege of the infinite Author and Preserver of 
things, who never slumbers nor sleeps ; but is not competent to any finite 
being, at least not to the soul of man. We know certainly, by experience, 
that we sometimes think, and thence draw this infallible consequence, that 
there is something in us that has a power to think : but whether that sub- 
stance perpetually thinks or no, we can be no farther assured than experi- 
ence informs us. For to say that actual thinking is essential to the soul, 
and inseparable from it, is to beg what is in question, and not to prove it by 
reason ; which is necessary to be done, if it be not a self-evident proposition. 
But whether this, "that the soul always thinks," be a self-evident proposi- 
ion, that every body assents to at first hearing, I appeal to mankind. It 



79 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

is doubted whether I thought at all last night or no ; the question being about 
a matter of fact, it is begging it to bring, as a proof for it, an hypothesis, 
which is the very thing in dispute : by which way one may prove any thing : 
a*id it is but supposing that all watches, whilst the balance beats, think ; 
and it is sufficiently proved, and past doubt, that my watch thought all last 
night. But he that would not deceive himself, ought to build his hypothesis 
on matter of fact, and make it out by sensible experience, and not presume 
on matter of fact, because of his hypothesis: that is, because he supposes it 
to be so : which way of proving amounts to this, that I must necessarily 
think all last night, because another supposes I always think, though I my- 
self cannot perceive that I always do so. 

But men in love with their opinions may not only suppose what is in 
question, but allege wrong matter of fact. How else could any one make 
it an inference of mine, " that a thing is not, because we are not sensible of 
it in our sleep?" I do not say there is no soul in a man, because he is not 
sensible of it in his sleep : but I do say, he cannot think at any time, waking 
or sleeping, without being sensible of it. Our being sensible of it, is not 
necessary to any thing, but to our thoughts : and to them it is, and to them 
it will always be necessary, till we can think without being conscious of it. 

Sect. 11. It is not always conscious of it. — I grant that the soul in a 
waking man is never without thought, because it is the condition of being 
awake : but whether sleeping without dreaming be not an affection of the 
whole man, mind as well as body, may be worth a waking man's considera- 
tion ; it being hard to conceive that any thing should think, and not be con- 
scious of it. If the soul doth think in a sleeping man without being con- 
scious of it, I ask, whether, during such thinking, it has any pleasure or pain, 
or is capable of happiness or misery 1 I am sure the man is not, any more 
than the bed or earth he lies on. For to be happy or miserable, without being 
conscious of it, seems to me utterly inconsistent and impossible. Or if it be 
possible that the soul can, whilst the body is sleeping, have its thinking, en- 
joyments and concerns, its pleasure or pain apart, which the man is not 
conscious of, nor partakes in ; it is certain that Socrates asleep, and So- 
crates awake, is not the same person ; but his soul when he sleeps, and So- 
rates the man, consisting of body and soul when he is waking, are two per- 
sons ; since waking Socrates has no knowledge of, or concernment for, that 
happiness or misery of his soul which it enjoys alone by itself whilst he sleeps, 
without perceiving any thing of it, any more than he has for the happiness 
or misery of a man in the Indies, whom he knows not. For if we take 
wholly away all consciousness of our actions and sensations, especially of 
pleasure and pain, and the concernment that accompanies it, it will be hard to 
know wherein to place personal identity. 

Sect. 12. If a sleeping man thinks without knowing it, the sleeping 
and waking man aretwo persons. — "The soul, during sound sleep, thinks," 
say these men. Whilst it thinks and perceives, it is capable certainly of 
those of delight or trouble, as well as any other perceptions ; and it must 
necessarily be conscious of its own perceptions. But it has all this apart ; 
the sleeping man, it is plain, is conscious of nothing of all this. Let us 
suppose then that the soul of Castor, while he is sleeping, retired from his 
body, which is no impossible supposition for the men I have here to do with, 
who so liberally allow life, without a thinking soul, to all other animals. 
These men cannot then judge it impossible or a contradiction, that the body 
should live without the soul; nor that the soul should subsist and think, or 
have perception, even perception of happiness or misery, without the body. 
Let us then, as I say, suppose the soul of Castor separated, during his sleep, 
from his body, to think apart. Let us suppose, too, that it chooses for its 
scene of thinking, the body of another man, v. g. Pollux, who is sleeping 
without a soul: for if Castor's soul can think, whilst Castor is asleep, what 
Castor is never conscious of, it is no matter what place he chooses to think in. 



Ch. 1. THE ORIGINAL OF OUR IDEAS. 79 

We have here, then, the bodies of two men with only one soul between them, 
which we will suppose to sleep and wake by turns ; and the soul still think- 
ing in the waking man, whereof the sleeping man is never conscious, has 
never the least perception. I ask, then, whether Castor and Pollux, thus, 
with only one soul between them, which thinks and perceives in one what 
the other is never conscious of, nor is concerned for, are not two distinct 
persons, as Castor and Hercules, or as Socrates and Plato were % And 
whether one of them might not be very happy, and the other very miser- 
able 1 Just by the same reason they make the soul and the man two per- 
sons, who make the soul think apart what the man is not conscious of 
For I suppose nobody v/ill make identity of person to consist in the soul's 
being united to the very same numerical particles of matter ; for if that be 
necessary to identity, it will be impossible in that constant flux of the par- 
ticles of our bodies, that any man should be the same person two days, or 
two moments, together. 

Sect. 13. Impossible to convince those that sleep without dreaming, 
that they think. — Thus, methinks, every drowsy nod shakes their doctrine, 
who teach, that the soul is always thinking. Those, at least, who do at 
any time sleep without dreaming, can never be convinced that their thoughts 
are sometimes for four hours busy without their knowing of it ; and if they 
are taken in the very act, waked in the middle of that sleeping contempla- 
tion, can give no manner of account of it. 

Sect. 14. That men dream without remembering it, in vain urged. — It 
will perhaps be said, " that the soul thinks even in the soundest sleep, but 
the memory retains it not." That the soul in a sleeping man should be 
this moment busy a thinking, and the next moment in a waking man, not 
remember nor be able to recollect one jot of all those thoughts, is very hard 
to be conceived, and would need some better proof than bare assertion to 
make it be believed. For who can, without any more ado, but being barely 
told so, imagine that the greatest part of men do, during all their lives, for 
several hours every day, think of something, which if they were asked, even 
in the middle of these thoughts, they could remember nothing at all of? 
Most men, I think, pass a great part of their sleep without dreaming. I 
once knew a man that was bred a scholar, and had no bad memory, who told 
me he had never dreamed in his life till he had that fever he was then 
newly recovered of, which was about the five or six and twentieth year of 
his age. I suppose the world affords more such instances : at least every 
one's acquaintance will furnish him with examples enough of such as pass 
most of their nights without dreaming. 

Sect. 15. Upon this hypothesis the thoughts of a sleeping man ought 
to be most rational. — To think often, and never to retain it so much as 
one moment, is a very useless sort of thinking ; and the soul, in such a state 
of thinking, does very little, if at all, - excel that of a looking-glass, which 
constantly receives a variety of images, or ideas, but retains none ; they 
disappear and vanish, and there remain no footsteps of them ; the looking- 
glass is never the better for such ideas, nor the soul for such thoughts. 
Perhaps it will be said, " that in a waking man the materials of the body 
are employed and made use of in thinking; and that the memory of thoughts 
is retained by the impressions that are made on the brain, and the traces 
there left after such thinking; but that in the thinking of the soul, which 
is not perceived in a sleeping man, there the soul thinks apart, and making 
no use of the organs of the body, leaves no impression on it, and consequently no 
memory of such thoughts." Not to mention again the absurdity of two distinct 
persons, which follows from this supposition, I answer farther, that what- 
everideas the mind can receive and contemplate without the help of the body, 
it is reasonable to conclude it can retain without the help of the body too ; 
or else the soul, or any separate spirit, will have but little advantage by 
thinking. If it has no memory of its own thoughts ; if it cannot lay thena 



80 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

up for its own use, and be able to recall them upon occasion; if it cannot 
reflect upon what is past, and make use of its former experiences, rea- 
sonings, and contemplations, to what purpose does it think ) They, who 
make the soul a thinking thing, at this rate, will not make it a much more 
noble being, than those do, whom they condemn for allowing it to be noth- 
ing but the subtilest parts of matter. Characters drawn on dust, that the 
first breath of wind effaces ; or impressions made on a heap of atoms, or ani- 
mal spirits, are altogether as useful, and render the subject as noble, as 
he thoughts of a soul that perish in thinking ; that once out of sight are 
jone for ever, and leave no memory of themselves behind them. Nature 
never makes excellent things for mean or no uses : and it is hardly to be 
conceived, that our infinitely wise Creator should make so admirable a 
faculty as the power of thinking, that faculty which comes nearest the ex- 
;ellency of his own incomprehensible being, to be so idly and uselessly 
employed, at least a fourth part of its time here, as to think constantly, 
without remembering any of those thoughts, without doing any good to 
itself or others, or being any way useful to any other part of the creation. 
If we will examine it, we shall not find, I suppose, the motion of dull and 
senseless matter, any where in the universe, made so little use of, and so 
wholly thrown away. 

Sect. 16. On this hypothesis the soul must have ideas not derived 
from sensation or reflection, of which there is no appearance. — It is true, 
we have sometimes instances of perception whilst we are asleep, and re- 
tain the memory of those thoughts ; but how extravagant and incoherent 
for the most part they are, how little conformable to the perfection and 
order of a rational being, those who are acquainted with dreams need not 
be told. This I would willingly be satisfied in, whether the soul, when it 
thinks thus apart, and as it were separate from the body, acts less ration- 
ally than when conjointly with it or no. If its separate thoughts be less ra- 
tional, then these men must say, that the soul owes the perfection of 
rational thinking to the body : if it does not, it is a wonder that our dreams 
should be, for the most part, so frivolous and irrational ; and that the soul 
should retain none of its more rational soliloquies and meditations. 

Sect. 17. If I think when I know it not, nobody else can know it. — 
Those who so confidently tell us that " the soul always actually thinks," I 
would they would also tell us what those ideas are that are in the soul of 
a child before, or just at the union with the body, before it hath received 
any by sensation. The dreams of sleeping men are, as I take it, all 
made up of the waking man's ideas, though for the most part, oddly put 
together. It is strange, if the soul has ideas of its own, that it derived not 
from sensation or reflection (as it must have if it thought before it recei- 
ved any impressions from the body) that it should never in its private 
thinking (so private that the man himself perceives it not) retain any 
of them, the very moment it wakes out of them, and then make the man 
glad with new discoveries. Who can find it reasonable that the soul should, 
in its retirement, during sleep, have so many hours' thoughts, and yet. 
never light on any one of those ideas it borrowed not from sensation 
or reflection; or, at least, preserve the memory of none but such, which 
being occasioned from the body, must needs be less natural to a spirit l 
It is strange the soul should never once in a man's whole life recall over 
any of its pure native thoughts, and those ideas it had before it borrowed 
any thing from the body ; never bring into the waking man's view any other 
ideas but what have a tang of the cask, and manifestly derive their ori- 
ginal from that union. If it always thinks, and so had ideas before it was 
united, or before it received any from the body, it is not to be supposed but 
that during sleep it recollects its native ideas ; and during that retirement 
from communicating with the body, whilst it thinks by itself, the ideas it 
is busied about sho-ild be, sometimes at least, those more natural and con- 



Ch. 1. THE ORIGINAL OF OUR IDEAS. 81 

genial ones which it had in itself, underived from the body, or its own 
operations about them ; which, since the waking man never remembers, 
we must from this hypothesis conclude, either that the soul remembers 
something that the man does not, or else that memory belongs only to 
such ideas as are derived from the body, or the mind's operations about 
them. 

Sect. 18. How knows any one that the soul always thinks? for if it be not 
a self-evident proposition, it needs proof — I would be glad also to learn 
from these men, who so confidently pronounce that the human soul, or, 
which is all one, that a man always thinks, how they come to know it ! 
nay, how they come to know that they themselves think, when they them- 
selves do not perceive it ! This, I am afraid, is to be sure without proofs ; 
and to know, without perceiving: it is, I suspect, a confused notion, 
taken up to serve an hypothesis ; and none of those clear truths, that 
either their own evidence forces us to admit, or common experience 
makes it impudence to deny. For the most that can be said of it is, 
*.hat it is possible the soul may always think, but not always retain it in 
nemory: and I say, it is a.s possible that the soul may not always think, 
and much more probable that it should sometimes not think, than that it 
should often think, and that a long while together, and not be conscious to 
itself the next moment after that it had thought. 

Sect. 19. That a man should be busy in thinking, and yet not retain it 
the next moment, very improbable. — To suppose the soul to think, and the 
man not to perceive it, is, as has been said, to make two persons in one 
man ; and if one considers well these men's way of speaking, one should 
be led into a suspicion that they do so. For they who tell us that the soul 
always thinks, do never, that I remember, say that a man always thinks. 
Can the soul think, and not the man! or a man think, and not be conscious 
of it! This, perhaps, would be suspected of jargon in others. If they say 
the man thinks always, but is not always conscious of it, they may as well 
say his body is extended without having parts : for it is altogether as in- 
telligible to say, that a body is extended without parts, as that any thing 
thinks without being conscious of it, or perceiving that it does so. They 
who talk thus may, with as much reason, if it be necessary to their hypo- 
thesis, say, that a man is always hungry, but that he does not always feel 
it : whereas hunger consists in that very sensation, as thinking consists in 
being conscious that one thinks. If they say that a man is always conscious 
to himself of thinking ; I ask how they know it. Consciousness is the 
perception of what passes in a man's own mind. Can another man per- 
ceive that I am conscious of any thing, when I perceive it not myself* 
No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience. Wake a man 
out of a sound sleep, and ask him what he was that moment thinking of! 
If he himself be conscious of nothing he then thought on, he must be a 
notable diviner of thoughts that can assure him that he was thinking ; may 
he not with more reason assure him he was not asleep ! This is something 
beyond philosophy ; and it cannot be less than revelation, that discovers to 
another thoughts in my mind, when I can find none there myself: and they 
must needs have a penetrating sight, who can certainly see that I think, when 
I cannot perceive it myself, and when I declare that I do not : and yet 
can see that dogs or elephants do not think, when they give all the demon- 
stration of it imaginable, except only telling us that they do so. This 
some may suspect to be a step beyond the Rosicrucians ; it seeming easier 
to make one's self invisible to others, than to make another's thoughts 
visible to me, which are not visible to himself. But it is but defining 
the soul to be "a substance that always thinks," and the business is done. 
If such a definition be of any authority, I know not what it can serve for, 
but to make many men suspect that they have no souls at all, since they 
find a good part of their lives pass away without thinking. For no defi- 



82 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

nitions that I know, no suppositions of any sect, are of force enough to 
destroy constant experience ; and perhaps it is the affectation of knowing 
beyond what we perceive, that makes so much useless dispute and noise 
in the world. 

Sect. 20. No ideas but from sensation or reflection evident, if we ob- 
serve children. — I see no reason, therefore, to believe that the soul thinks 
before the senses have furnished it with ideas to think on ; and as those are 
increased and retained, so it comes, by exercise, to improve its faculty of 
thinking, in the several parts of it, as well as afterward, by compounding those 
ideas, and reflecting on its own operations ; it increases its stock as well as 
facility in remembering, imagining, reasoning, and other modes of thinking. 

Sect. 21. He that will suffer himself to be informed by observation and 
experience, and not make his own hypothesis the rule of nature, will find 
few signs of a soul accustomed to much thinking in a new-born child, and 
much fewer of any reasoning at all. And yet it is hard to imagine, that 
the rational soul should think so much, and not reason at all. And he 
that will consider that infants newly corne into the world, spend the great- 
est part of their time in sleep, and are seldom awake, but when either hunger 
calls for the teat, or some pain (the most importunate of all sensations), or 
some other violent impression upon the body, forces the mind to perceive 
and attend to it : he, I say, who considers this, will, perhaps, find reason to 
imagine, that a foetus in the mother's womb differs not much from the state 
of a vegetable ; but passes the greatest part of its time without percep- 
tion or thought, doing very little in a place where it needs not seek for food, 
and is surrounded with liquor, always equally soft, and near of the same 
temper ; where the eyes have no light, and the ears, so shut up, are not 
very susceptible of sounds ; and where there is little or no variety, or change 
of objects to move the senses. 

Sect. 22. Follow a child from its birth, and observe the alterations that 
time makes, and you shall find, as the mind by the senses comes more and 
more to be furnished with ideas, it comes to be more and more awake; 
thinks more, the more it has matter to think on. After some time it be- 
gins to know the objects, which, being most familiar with it, have made 
lasting impressions. Thus it comes by degrees to know the persons it 
daily converses with, and distinguish them from strangers ; which are in- 
stances and effects of its coming to retain and distinguish the ideas the 
senses convey to it. And so we may observe how the mind, by degrees, 
improves in these, and advances to the exercise of those other faculties of 
enlarging, compounding, and abstracting its ideas, and of reasoning about 
them, and reflecting upon all these, of which I shall have occasion to speak 
more hereafter. 

Sect. 23. If it shall be demanded, then, when a man begins to have 
any ideas 1 I think the true answer is, when he first has any sensation. 
For since there appear not to be any ideas in the mind, before the senses 
have conveyed any in, I conceive that ideas in the understanding are coeval 
with sensation ; which is such an impression or motion, made in some part 
of the body, as produces some perception in the understanding. It is about 
these impressions made on our senses by outward objects, that the mind 
seems first to employ itself in such operations as we call perception, re- 
membering, consideration, reasoning, &c. 

Sect. 24. The original of all our knowledge. — In time the mind comes 
to reflect on its own operations, about the ideas got by sensation, and there- 
by stores itself with a new set of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection. 
These are the impressions that are made on our senses by outward objects, that 
are extrinsical to the mind, and its own operations, proceeding from powers 
intrinsical and proper to itself: which, when reflected on by itself, becoming 
also objects of its contemplation, are, as I have said, the original of all 
knowledge. Thus, the first capacitv of human intellect is that the mind 






Ch. 1. THE ORIGINAL OF OUR IDEAS. 83 

is fitted to receive the impressions made on it, either through the senses, 
by outward objects, or by its own operations, when it reflects on them. 
This is the first step a man makes towards the discovery of any thing, and 
the ground work whereon to build all those notions which ever he shall 
have naturally in this world. All those sublime thoughts which tower above 
the clouds, and reach as high as heaven itself, take their rise and footing 
here : in all that good extent wherein the mind wanders, in those remote 
speculations it may seem to be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond 
those ideas which sense or reflection have offered for its contemplation. 

Sect. 25. In the reception of simple ideas, the understanding is for 
the most part passive. — In this part the understanding is merely passive ; 
and whether or no it will have these beginnings, and, as it were, materials 
of knowledge, is not in its own power. For the objects of our senses do, 
many of them, obtrude their particular ideas upon our minds, whether we 
will or no : and the operations of our minds will not let us be without, at 
least, some obscure notions of them. No man can be wholly ignorant of 
what he does when he thinks. These simple ideas, when offered to the 
mind, the understanding can no more refuse to have, nor alter, when they 
are imprinted, nor blot them out, and make new ones itself, than a mirror 
can refuse, alter, or obliterate the images or ideas which the objects set 
before it do therein produce. As the bodies that surround us do diversely 
affect our organs, the mind is forced to receive the impressions, and can- 
not avoid the perception of those ideas that are annexed to them. 



CHAPTER II. 

OF SIMPLE IDEAS. 

Sect. 1. Uncompounded appearances. — The better to understand the 
nature, manner, and extent of our knowledge, one tiling is carefully to be 
observed concerning the ideas we have: and that is, that some of them are 
simple, and some complex. 

Though the qualities that affect our senses are, in the things themselves, 
so united and blended, that there is no separation, no distance between 
them ; yet it is plain the ideas they produce in the mind enter by the senses 
simple and unmixed : for though the sight and touch often take in from the 
same object, at the same time, different ideas, as a man sees at once mo- 
tion and colour, the hand feels softness and warmth in the same piece of 
wax; yet the simple ideas, thus united in the same subject, are as perfectly 
distinct as those that come in by different senses : the coldness and hard- 
ness which a man feels in a piece of ice being as distinct ideas in the 
mind as the smell and whiteness of a lily ; or as the taste of sugar and 
smell of a rose. And there is nothing can be plainer to a man than the 
clear and distinct perceptions he has of those simple ideas ; which, being 
each in itself uncompounded, contains in it nothing but one uniform ap- 
pearance c conception in the mind, and is not distinguishable into differ- 
ent ideas. 

Sect. 2. The mind can neither make nor destroy them. — These simple 
ideas, the materials of all our knowledge, are suggested and furnished to 
the mind only by those two ways above mentioned, viz. sensation and re- 
flection^). When the understanding is once stored with these simple 

(1) Against this, that the materials of all our knowledge are suggested, and 
furnished to the mind only by sensation and reflection, the Bishop of Worcester 
makes use of the idea of substance in these words: " If the idea of substance he 
grounded upon plain and evident reason, then we must allow an idea of substance 



84 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book. 1. 

ideas, it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite them, even to an al- 
most infinite variety ; and so can make at pleasure new complex ideas. 
But it is not in the power of the most exalted wit or enlarged understand- 
ing-, by any quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new 
simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways aforementioned : nor can 
any force of the understanding destroy those that are there. The dominion 
or man in this little world of his own understanding, being much- what the 

which comes not in by sensation or reflection ; and so we may be certain of some- 
thing which we have not by these ideas." 

To which our author answers*: These words of your lordship's contain nothing 
as I see in them against me: for I never said that the general idea of substance 
comes in by sensation and reflection; or that it is a simple idea of sensation or 
reflection, though it be ultimately founded in them; for it is a complex idea, made 
up of the general idea of something, or being with the relation of a support to 
accidents. For general ideas come not into the mind by sensation or reflection, 
but are the creatures or inventions of the understanding, as I think I have shownf; 
and also how the mind makes them from ideas which it has got ^y sensation and 
reflection: and as to the ideas of relation, how the mind forms them, and how 
they are derived from, and ultimately terminate in, ideas of sensation and reflec- 
tion, I have likewise shown. 

But that I may not be mistaken, what I mean, when I speak of ideas of sensa- 
tion and reflection, as the materials of all our knowledge; give me leave, my lord, 
to set down here a place or two, out of my book, to explain myself; as I thus 
speak of ideas of sensation and reflection: 

"That these, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several 
modes, and the compositions made out of them, we shall find to contain all our 
whole stock of ideas, and we have nothing in our minds which did not come in 
one of these two ways:):." This thought, in another place, I express thus: 

" These are the most considerable of those simple ideas which the mind has, 
and out of which is made all its other knowledge ; all which it receives by the 
two forementioned ways of sensation and reflection^." And, 

" Thus I have, in a short draught, given a view of our original ideas, from 
whence all the rest are derived, and of which they are made up||." 

This, and the like, said in other places, is what I have'thought concerning ideas 
of sensation and reflection, as the foundation and materials of all our ideas, and 
consequently of all our knowledge : I have set down these particulars out of my 
book, that the reader, having a full view of my opinion herein, may the better 
see what in it is liable to your lordship's reprehension. For that your lordship 
is not very well satisfied with it, appears not only by the words under consider- 
ation, but by these also: " But we are still told, that our understanding can have 
no other ideas, but either from sensation or reflection." 

Your lordship's argument, in the passage we are upon, stands thus : if the gene- 
ral idea of substance be grounded upon plain and evident reason, then we must 
allow an idea of substance, which comes not in by sensation or reflection. This 
is a consequence which, with submission, I think will not hold, because it is 
founded upon a supposition which I think will not hold, viz. That reason 
and ideas are inconsistent ; for if that supposition be not true, then the general 
idea of substance may be grounded on plain and evident reason ; and yet it will 
not follow from thence, that it is not ultimately grounded on, and derived from, 
ideas which come in by sensation or reflection, and so cannot be said to come 
in by sensation or reflection. 

To explain myself, and clear my meaning in this matter. All the ideas of all 
th$ sensible qualities of a cherry come into my mind by sensation ; the ideas of 
perceiving, thinking, reasoning, knowing, &c. come into my mind by reflection. 
The ideas of these qualities and actions, or powers, are perceived by the mind to 
be by themselves inconsistent with existence : or as your lordship well expresses 

* In his first letter to the Bishop of Worcester. 

t B. 3. c. 3. B. 2. c. 25, &c. 28. sect. 18. 

i B. 2. c. 1. sect. 5. § B. 2. c. 7. sect. 10. || B. 2. c. 21. sect. 73- 



Ch. 2. OF SIMPLE IDEAS. 85 

same as it is in the great world of visible things ; wherein his power, how- 
ever managed by art and skill, reaches no farther than to compound and 
divide the materials that are made to his hand ; but can do nothing towards 
the making the least particle of new matter, or destroying one atom of 
what is already in being. The same inability will every one find in him- 
self, who shall go about to fashion in his understanding any simple idea, 
not received in by his senses from external objects, or by reflection from 
the operations of his own mind about them. I would have any one cry to 
fancy any taste which had never affected his palate ; or frame the idea of a 
scent he had never smelt : and when he can do this, I will also conclude 
that a blind man hath ideas of colours, and a deaf man true distinct notions 
of sounds. 

Sect. 3. This is the reason why, though we cannot believe it impossi- 
ble to God to make a creature with other organs, and more ways to con- 
vey into the understanding the notice of those corporeal things than those 
five, as they are usually counted, which he has given to man : yet I think 
it is not possible for any one to imagine any other qualities in bodies, how- 
soever constituted, whereby they can be taken notice of, besides sounds, 
tastes, smells, visible and tangible qualities. And had mankind been made 
but with four senses, the qualities then which are the object of the fifth 

it, we find that we can have no true conception of any modes or accidents, but wu 
must conceive a substratum, or subject, wherein they are, i. e. that they cannot 
exist or subsist of themselves. Hence the mind perceives their necessary con- 
nexion with inherence, or being supported ; which being a relative idea, super- 
added to the red colour in a cherry, or to thinking in a man, the mind frames 
the correlative idea of a support. For I never denied that the mind could frame 
-o itself ideas of relation, but have showed the quite contrary in my chapters 
about relation. But because a relation cannot be founded in nothing, or be the 
-elation of nothing, and the thing here related as a supporter, or a support, is not 
'epresented to the mind by any clear and distinct idea; therefore the obscure 
*nd indistinct vague idea of thing, or something, is all that is left to be the positive 
dea, which has the relation of a support or substratum, to modes or accidents ; 
md that general indetermined idea of something is, by the abstraction of the mind, 
ierived also from the simple ideas of sensation and reflection; and thus the mind, 
Trom the positive, simple ideas got by sensation and reflection, comes to the gene- 
ral relative idea of substance, which, without these positive simple ideas, it would 
never have. 

This your lordship (without giving by detail all the particular steps of the 
mind in this business) has well expressed in this more familiar way: we find 
we can have no true conception of any modes or accidents but we must conceive 
a substratum, or subject, wherein they are ; since it is a repugnancy to our con- 
ceptions of things, that modes or accidents should subsist by themselves. 

Hence your lordship calls it the rational idea of substance : and says, " I grant, 
that by sensation and reflection we come to know the. powers and properties of 
things ; but our reason is satisfied that there must be something beycnd these, be- 
cause it is impossible that they should subsist by themselves:" so that if this be 
that which your lordship means by the rational idea of substance, I see nothing 
there is in it against what I have said, that it is founded on simple ideas of sensa- 
tion or reflection, and that it is a very obscure idea. 

Your lordship's conclusion from your foregoing words is, "and so we may 
be certain of some things which we have not by those ideas ;" which is a propo- 
sition, whose precise meaning your lordship will forgive me, if I profess, as it 
stands there, I do not understand. For it is uncertain to me whether your lord- 
ship means, we may certainly know the existence of something, which we have 
not by those ideas ; or certainly know the distinct properties of something, which 
we have not by those ideas: or certainly know the truth of some proposition which 
we have not by those ideas : for to be certain of something may signify either of 
these. But in which soever of these it be meant, 1 do not see how 1 am concerned 
in it. 



66 OI HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Back 2 

sense, had been as far from our notice, imagination, and conception, as now 
any belonging to a sixth, seventh, or eighth sense, can possibly be : which, 
whether yet some other creatures, in some other parts of this vast and 
stupendous universe, may not have, will be a great presumption to deny. 
He that will not set himself proudly at the top of all things, but will con- 
sider the immensity of this fabric, and the great variety that is to be found 
in this little and inconsiderable part of it which he has to do with, may be 
apt to think, that in other mansions of it there may be other and different 
intelligent beings, of whose faculties he has as little knowledge or appre- 
hension, as a worm shut up in one drawer of a cabinet hath of the senses 
or understanding of a man : such variety and excellency being suitable to 
the wisdom and power of the Maker. I have here followed the common 
opinion of man's having but five senses ; though, perhaps, there may be 
justly counted more : but either supposition serves equally to my present 
purpose. 



CHAPTER III. 

OF IDEAS OF ONE SENSE. 

Sect. 1. Division of simple ideas. — The better to conceive the ideas 
we receive from sensation, it may not be amiss for us to consider them in 
reference to the different ways whereby they make their approaches to our 
minds, and make themselves perceivable by us. 

First, then, There are some which come into our minds by one sense 
only. 

Secondly, There are others, that convey themselves into the mind by 
more senses than one. 

Thirdly, Others that are had from reflection only. 

Fourthly, There are some that make themselves way, and are suggested 
to the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection. 

We shall consider them apart under their several heads. 

First, There are some ideas which have admittance only through one 
sense, which is peculiarly adapted to receive them. Thus light and colours, 
as white, red, yellow, blue, with their several degrees or shades, and mix- 
tures, as green, scarlet, purple, sea-green, and the rest, come in only by 
the eyes : all kinds of noises, sounds, and tones, only by the ears : the se- 
veral tastes and smells, by the nose and palate. And if these organs, or 
the nerves, which are the conduits to convey them from without to their 
audience in the brain, the mind's presence room (as I may so call it), are 
any of them so disordered, as not to perform their functions, they have no 
postern to be admitted by ; no other way to bring themselves into view, 
and be perceived by the understanding. 

The most considerable of those belonging to the touch are heat and cold, 
and solidity ; all the rest, consisting almost wholly in the sensible configu- 
ration, as smooth and rough, or else more or less firm adhesion of the 
parts, as hard and soft, tough and brittle, are obvious enough. 

Sect. 2. Few simple ideas have names. — I think it will be needless to 
enumerate all the particular simple ideas belonging to each sense. Nor 
indeed is it possible, if we would ; there being a great many more of them 
belonging to most of the senses than we have names for. The variety of 
smells, which are as many almost, if not more, than species of bodies in the 
world, do most of them want names. Sweet and stinking commonly serve 
our turn for these ideas, which in effect is little more than to call them 
pleasing or displeasing; though the smell of a rose and violet, both sweet 
are certainly very distinct ideas. Nor are the different tastes, that by out 



Ch. 3. OF IDEAS OF ONE SENSE. 87 

palates we receive ideas of, much better provided with names. Sweet, 
bitter, sour, harsh, and salt, are almost all the epithets we have to denomi- 
nate that numberless variety of relishes which are to be found distinct, not 
only in almost every soil of creatures, but in the different parts of the same 
plant, fruit, or animal. The same may be said of colours and sounds. I 
shall, therefore, in the account of simple ideas I am here giving, content 
myself to set down only such as are most material to our present purpose, 
or are in themselves less apt to be taken notice of, though they are very 
frequently the ingredients of our complex ideas, among which, I thinK, 1 
may well account solidity ; which, therefore, I shall treat of in the next chap- 
ter. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF SOLIDITY. 

Sect. 1. We receive this idea from touch. — The idea of solidity we re- 
ceive by our touch ; and it arises from the resistance which we find in body, 
to the entrance of any other body into the place it possesses, till it has left 
it. There is no idea which we receive more constantly from sensation 
than solidity. Whether we move or rest, in what posture soever we are, 
we always feel something under us that supports us, and hinders our far- 
ther sinking downward : and the bodies which we daily handle make us 
perceive, that, whilst they remain between them, they do by an insurmount- 
able force hinder the approach of the parts of our hands that press them. 
That which thus hinders the approach of two bodies, when they are moved 
one toward another, I call solidity. I will not dispute whether this ac- 
ceptation of the word solid be nearer to its original signification than that 
which mathematicians use it in : it suffices, that I think the common notion 
of solidity will allow, if not justify, this use of it; but, if any one think it 
better to call it impenetrability, he has my consent. Only I have thought 
the term solidity the more proper to express this idea, not only because of 
its vulgar use in that sense, but also because it carries something more of 
positive in it than impenetrability, which is negative, and is, perhaps, more 
a consequence of solidity than solidity itself. This, of all others, seems the 
idea most intimately connected with, and essential to, body, so as nowhere 
else to be found or imagined, but only in matter. And though our senses 
take no notice of it, but in masses of matter, of a bulk sufficient to cause a 
sensation in us ; yet the mind, having once got this idea from such grosser 
sensible bodies, traces it farther ; and considers it, as well as figure, in the 
minutest particle of matter that can exist ; and finds it inseparably inherent 
in body, wherever or however modified. 

Sect. 2. Solidity fills space. — This is the idea which belongs to body, 
whereby we conceive it to fill space. The idea of which filling of space is, 
that, where we imagine any space taken up by a solid substance, we con- 
ceive it so to possess it, that it excludes all other solid substances ; and will 
for ever hinder any other two bodies, that move toward one another in a 
straight line, from coming to touch one another, unless it removes from 
between them, in a line not parallel to that which they move in. This idea 
of it the bodies which we ordinarily handle sufficiently furnish us with. 

Sect. 3. Distinct from space. — This resistance, whereby it keeps other 
bodies out of the space which it possesses, is so great, that no force, how 
great soever, can surmount it. All the bodies in the world, pressing a drop 
of water on all sides, will never be able to overcome the resistance which 
it will make, soft as it is, to their approaching one another, till it be re 



88 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

moved out of their way : whereby our idea of solidity is distinguished botl: 
from pure space, which is capable neither of resistance nor motion, and 
from the ordinary idea of hardness. For a man may conceive two bodies at a 
distance, so as they may approach one another, without touching or dis- 
placing any solid thing, till their superficies come to meet : whereby I think 
we have the clear idea of space without solidity. For (not to go so far as 
annihilation of any particular body) I ask, whether a man cannot have the 
idea of the motion of one single body alone, without any other succeeding 
immediately into its place 1 I think it is evident he can : the idea of mo- 
tion in one body no more including the idea of motion in another, than the 
idea of a square figure in one body includes the idea of a square figure in 
another. I do not ask, whether bodies do so exist that the motion of one 
body cannot be really without the motion of another"? To determine this 
either way, is to beg the question for or against a vacuum. But my ques- 
tion is, whether one cannot have the idea of one body moved whilst others 
are at rest] And I think this no one will deny. If so, then the place it 
deserted gives us the the idea of pure space without solidity, whereinto 
any other body may enter, without either resistance or protrusion of any 
thing. When the sucker in a pump is drawn, the space it filled in the 
tube is certainly the same whether any other body follows the motion of 
the sucker or not : nor does it imply a contradiction that, upon the motion 
of one body, another that is only contiguous to it should not follow it. The 
necessity of such a motion is built only on the supposition that the world 
is full, but not on the distinct ideas of space and solidity ; which are as 
different as resistance and not resistance ; protrusion and not protrusion. 
And that men have ideas of space without a body, their very disputes about 
a vacuum plainly demonstrate, as is showed in another place. 

Sect. 4. From hardness. — Solidity is hereby also differenced from hard- 
ness, in that solidity consists in repletion, and so an utter exclusion of 
other bodies out of the space it possesses ; but hardness, in a firm cohesion 
of the parts of matter, making up masses of a sensible bulk, so that the 
whole does not easily change its figure. And, indeed, hard and soft are 
names that we give to things only in relation to the constitutions of our 
own bodies ; that being generally called hard by us which will put us to 
pain sooner than change figure by the pressure of any part of our bodies ; 
and that on the contrary soft, which changes the situation of its parts upon 
an easy and unpainfu 1 touch. 

But this difficulty of changing the situation of the sensible parts among 
themselves, or of the figure of the whole, gives no more solidity to the 
hardest body in the world, than to the softest ; nor is an adamant one jot 
more solid than water. For though the two flat sides of two pieces of 
marble will more easily approach each other, between which there is noth- 
ing but water or air, than if there be a diamond between them ; yet it is not 
that the parts of the diamond are more solid than those of water, or resist 
more; but because, the parts of water being more easily separable from 
each other, they will, by a side-motion, be more easily removed, and give 
way to the approach of the two pieces of marble. But if they could be 
kept from making place by that side-motion, they would eternally hinder 
the approach of these two pieces of marble as much as the diamond; and it 
would be as impossible by any force to surmount their resistance, as to 
surmount the resistance of the parts of a diamond. The softest body in 
th 3 world will as invincibly resist the coming together of any other two bodies 
if it be not put out of the way, but remain between them, as the hardest 
that can be found or imagined. He that shall fill the yielding soft body 
well with air or water, will quickly find its resistance : and he that thinks 
that nothing but bodies that are hard can keep his hands from approach- 
ing one another, will be pleased to make a trial with the air enclosed in a 
football. The experiment, I have been told, was made at Florence with a 



Ch. 4. OF SOLIDITY. 89 

hollow globe of gold filled with water, and exactly closed, which farther 
shows the solidity of so soft a body as water. For the golden globe thus fill- 
ed being put into a press which was driven by the extreme force of screws, 
the water made itself way through the pores of that very close metal ; and, 
finding no room for a near approach of its particles within, got to the out- 
side, where it rose like a dew, and so fell in drops, before the sides of the 
globe could be made to yield to the violent compression of the engine 
that squeezed it. 

Sect. 5. On solidity depend impulse, resistance, and protrusion. — By 
this idea of solidity, is the extension of body distinguished from the exten- 
sion of space: the extension of body being nothing but the cohesion or con- 
tinuity of solid, separable, moveable parts ; and the extension of space, the 
continuity of unsolid, inseparable, and immoveable parts. Upon the soli- 
dity of bodies also depend their mutual impulse, resistance, and protrusion. 
Of pure space then, and solidity, there are several, (among which I confess 
myself one) who persuade themselves they have clear and distinct ideas ; 
and that they can think on space, without any thing in it that resists or is 
protruded by body. This is the idea of pure space, which they think they 
have as clear as any idea they can have of the extension of body ; the idea 
of the distance between the opposite parts of a concave superficies being 
equally as clear without as with the idea of any solid parts between : and 
on the other side they persuade themselves, that they have, distinct from 
that of pure space, the idea of something that fills space, that can be pro- 
truded by the impulse of other bodies, or resist their motion. If there be 
others that have not these two ideas distinct, but confound them, and 
make but one of them, I know not how men, who have the same idea 
under different iian.es, f,r different ideas under the same name, can in that 
case talk wi',a one another; any more than a man, who, not being blind or 
deaf, has dis'.-i^f. oeas < 1 the colour of scarlet, and the sound of a trumpet, 
could disco rse conce-*.. r,g scarlet colour with the blind man I mentioned 
in another p. ace, wno lanciedthat the idea of scarlet was like the sound 
of a trumpet. 

Sect. 6. What it is. — If any one ask me what this solidity is? I send 
him to his senses to inform him ; let him put a flint or a football between 
his hands and then endeavour to join them, and he will know. If he thinks 
this not a sufficient explication of solidity, what it is, and wherein it con- 
sists, I promise to tell him what it is, and wherein it consists, when he 
tells me what thinking is, or wherein it consists : or explains to me what 
extension or motion is, which perhaps seems much easier. The simple 
ideas we have are such as experience teaches them us : but if, beyond that, 
we endeavour by words to make them clearer in the mind, we shall suc- 
ceed no better than if we went about to clear up the darkness of a blind 
man's mind by talking ; and to discourse into him the ideas of light and 
colours. The reason of this I shall show in another place. 



CHAPTER V. 

OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF DIVERS SENSES. 

The ideas we get by more than one sense are of space, or extension, 
figure, rest, and motion ; for these make perceivable impressions, both on 
the eyes and touch : and we can receive and convey into our minds the 
ideas of the extension, figure, motion, and rest of bodies, both by seeing 
and feeling. But having occasion to speak more at large of these in ano- 
ther place, I here only enumerate them. • 
M 



90 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

CHAPTER VI. 

OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF REFLECTION. 

Sect. 1. Simple ideas are the operations of the mind about its other 
ideas. — The mind, receiving the ideas, mentioned in the foregoing chapters, 
from without, when it turns its view inward upon itself, and observes its 
own actions about those ideas it has, takes from thence other ideas, which 
are as capable to be the objects of its contemplation as any of those it re- 
ceived from foreign things. 

Sect. 2. The idea of perception, and idea of willing, we have from re- 
flection. — The two great and principal actions of the mind, which are 
most frequently considered, and which are so frequent, that every one that 
pleases may take notice of them in himself, are these two : perception or 
thinking ; and volition or willing. The power of thinking is called the un- 
derstanding, and the power of volition is called the will ; and these two 
powers or abilities in the mind are denominated faculties. Of some of the 
modes of these simple ideas of reflection, such as are remembrance, dis- 
cerning, reasoning, judging, knowledge, faith, &c, I shall have occasion to 
speak hearafter. 



CHAPTER VII. 

OF SIMPLE IDEAS OF BOTH SENSATION AND REFLECTION. 

Sect. 1. Pleasure and pain. — There be other simple ideas which con 
vey themselves into the mind by all the ways of sensation and reflection 
viz. pleasure or delight, and its opposite, pain or uneasiness, power, ex- 
istence, unity. 

Sect. 2. — Delight or uneasiness, one or other of them, join themselves 
to almost all our ideas, both of sensation and reflection : and there is scarce 
any affection of our senses from without, any retired thought of our mind 
within, which is not able to produce in us pleasure or pain. By pleasure 
and pain I would be understood to signify whatsoever delights or molests 
us most ; whether it arises from the thoughts of our minds, or any thing 
operating on our bodies. For whether we call it satisfaction, delight, plea- 
sure, nappiness, &c on the one side ; or uneasiness, trouble, pain, torment, 
anguish, misery, &c on the other; they are still but different degrees of 
the same thing, and belong to the ideas of pleasure and pain, delight or un- 
easiness; which are the names I shall most commonly use for those two 
sorts of ideas. 

Sect. 3. The infinitely wise Author of our being, having given us the 
power over several parts of our bodies, to move or keep them at rest as we 
think fit ; and also, by the motion of them, to move ourselves and other 
contiguous bodies in which consist all the actions of our body ; having also 
given a power to our minds, in several instances, to choose among its ideas, 
which it will think on, and to pursue the inquiry of this or that subject with 
consideration and attention, to excite us to these actions of thinking and 
motion that we are capable of; has been pleased to join to several thoughts, 
and several sensations, a perception of delight. If this were wholly sepa- 
rated from all our outward sensations and inward thoughts, we should 
have no reason to prefer one thought or action to another ; negligence to 
attention, or motion to rest. And so we should neither stir our bodies, 



Ch. 7. IDEAS OF SENSATION AND REFLECTION. 91 

nor employ our minds, but let our thoughts (if I may so call it) run adrift, 
without any direction or design ; and suffer the ideas of our minds, like un- 
regarded shadows, to make their appearances there, as it happened, without 
attending to them. In which state, man, however furnished with the facul- 
ties of understanding and will, would be a very idle inactive creature, and 
pass his time only in a lazy, lethargic dream. It has therefore pleased our 
wise Creator to annex to several objects, and the ideas which we receive 
from them, as also to several of our thoughts, a concomitant pleasure, and 
that in several objects, to several degrees : that those faculties which he 
had endowed us with might not remain wholly idle and unemployed by us. 

Sect. 4. Pain has the same efficacy and use to set us on work that 
pleasure has, we being as ready to employ our faculties to avoid that, as to 
pursue this ; only this is worth our consideration, that pain is often produ- 
ced by the same objects and ideas that produce pleasure in us. This their 
near conjunction, which makes us often feel pain in the sensations where 
we expected pleasure, gives us new occasion of admiring the wisdom and 
goodness of our Maker ; who, designing the preservation of our being, has 
annexed pain to the application of many things to our bodies, to warn us 
of the harm that they will do, and as advices to withdraw from them. But 
he, not designing our preservation barely, but the preservation of every part 
and organ in its perfection, hath, in many cases, annexed pain to those 
very ideas which delight us. Thus heat, that is very agreeable to us in one 
degree, by a little greater increase of it, proves no ordinary torment ; and 
the most pleasant of all sensible objects, light itself, if there be too much 
of it, if increased beyond a due proportion to our eyes, causes a very pain- 
ful sensation ; which is wisely and favourably so ordered by nature, that 
when any object does by the vehemency of its operation disorder the in- 
struments of sensation, whose structures cannot but be very nice and 
delicate, we might, by the pain, be warned to withdraw before the organ 
be quite put out of order, and so be unfitted for its proper function for the 
future. The consideration of those objects that produce it may well per- 
suade us, that this is the end or use of pain. For though great light be 
insufferable to our eyes, yet the highest degree of darkness does not at all 
disease them ; because that causing no disorderly motion in it, leaves that 
curious organ unharmed, in its natural state. But yet excess of cold as well 
as heat pains us, because it is equally destructive to that temper which is 
necessary to the preservation of life, and the exercise of the several func- 
tions of the body, and which consists in a moderate degree of warmth; or, 
if you please, a motion of the insensible parts of our bodies confined within 
certain bounds. 

Sect. 5. Beyond all this we may find another reason, why God hath 
scattered up and down several degrees of pleasure and pain, in all the things 
that environ and affect us, and blended them together in almost all that 
our thoughts and senses have to do with ; that we finding imperfection, dis- 
satisfaction, and want of complete happiness, in all the enjoyments which 
the creatures can afford us, might be led to seek it in the enjoyment of Him, 
" with whom there is fulness of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures 
for evermore." 

Sect. 6. Pleasure and pain. — Though what I have here said may not 
perhaps make the ideas of pleasure and pain clearer to us than our own 
experience does, winch is the only way that we are capable of having them ; 
yet the consideration of the reason why they are annexed to so many other 
ideas, serving to give us due sentiments of the wisdom and goodness of the 
Sovereign Disposer of all things, may not be unsuitable to the main end of 
these inquiries ; the knowledge and veneration of him being the chief end of 
all our thoughts, and the proper business of all understandings. 

Sect 7. Existence and unity. — Existence and unity are two other ideas 
that are suggested to the understanding by every object without, and every 



92 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

idea within. When ideas are in our minds, we consider them as being ac- 
tually there, as well as we consider things to be actually without us : which 
is, that they exist, or have existence ; and whatever we can consider as one 
thing, whether a real being or idea, suggests to the understanding the idea 
of unity. 

Sect. 8. Power. — Power also is another of those simple ideas which 
we receive from sensation and reflection. For observing in ourselves, that 
we can at pleasure move several parts of our bodies which were at rest, the 
effects also that natural bodies are able to produce in one another occur- 
mg every moment to our senses, we both these ways get the idea of power. 

Sect. 9. Succession. — Besides these there is another idea, which, 
though suggested by our senses, yet is more constantly offered to us by 
what passes in our minds ; and that is the idea of succession. For if we 
.ook immediately into ourselves, and reflect on what is observable there, 
we shall find our ideas always, whilst we are awake, or have any thought, 
passing in train, one going and another coming without intermission. 

Sect. 10. Simple ideas the materials of all our knowledge. — These, if 
they are not all, are at least (as I think) the most considerable of those 
simple ideas which the mind has, and out of which is made all its other 
knowledge ; all which it receives only by the two forementioned ways of sen- 
sation and reflection. 

Nor let any one think these too narrow bounds for the capacious mind 
of man to expatiate in, which takes its flight farther than the stars, and 
cannot be confined by the limits of the world; that extends its thoughts often 
even beyond the utmost expansion of matter, and makes incursions into that 
incomprehensible inane. I grant all this, but desire any one to assign any 
simple idea which is not received from one of those inlets before mention- 
ed, or any complex idea not made out of those simple ones. Nor will it 
be so strange to think these few simple ideas sufficient to employ the quick- 
est thought or largest capacity, and to furnish the materials of all that va- 
rious knowledge, and more various fancies and opinions of all mankind, if 
we consider how many words may be made out of the various composition 
of twenty-four letters, or if, going one step farther, we will but reflect on 
the variety of combinations that may be made with barely one of the above- 
mentioned ideas, viz. number, whose stock is inexhaustible and truly infinite ; 
and what a large and immense field doth extension alone afford the mathe- 
maticians ! 



CHAPTER VIII. 

SOME FARTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING OUR SIMPLE 

IDEAS. 

Sect. 1. Positive ideas from privative causes. — Concerning the simple 
ideas of sensation it is to be considered, that whatsoever is so constituted 
in nature as to be able, by affecting our senses, to cause any perception 
in the mind, doth thereby produce in the understanding a simple idea, which, 
whatever be the external cause of it, when it comes to be taken notice of 
by our discerning faculty, it is by the mind looked on and considered there 
to be a real positive idea in the understanding, as much as any other whatso- 
ever, though perhaps the cause of it be but privation of the subject. 

Sect. 2. Thus the ideas of heat and cold, light and darkness, white and 
black, motion and rest, are equally clear and positive ideas in the mind, 
though perhaps some of the causes which produce them are barely prii'a- 
tions in subjects, from whence our senses derive those ideas. These the 



Ch. 8. SIMPLE IDEAS 93 

understanding, in its view of them, considers all as distinct positive ideas, 
without taking notice of the causes that produce them; which is an inquiry 
not belonging to the idea, as it is in the understanding, but to the nature 
of the things existing without us. These are two very different things, and 
carefully to be distinguished ; it being one thing to perceive and know the 
idea of white or black, and quite another to examine what kind of particle? 
they must be, and how ranged in the superficies, to make any object ap- 
pear white or black. 

Sect. 3. A painter or dyer, who never inquired into their causes, hath 
the ideas of white and black, and other colours, as clearly, perfectly, and 
distinctly in his understanding, and perhaps more distinctly, than the philo- 
sopher, who hath busied himself in considering their natures, and thinks he 
knows how far either of them is in its cause positive or privative ; and the idea 
of black is no less positive in his mind than that of white, however the cause 
of that colour in the external object may be only a privation. 

Sect. 4. If it were the design of my present undertaking to inquire into the 
natural causes and manner of perception, I should offer this as a reason 
why a privative cause might, in some cases at least, produce a positive idea, 
viz. that all sensation being produced in us, only by different degrees and modes 
of motion in our animal spirits, variously agitated by external objects, the 
abatement of any former motion must as necessarily produce a new sensa- 
tion, as the variation or increase of it ; and so introduce a new idea, which 
depends only on a different motion of the animal spirits in that organ. 

Sect. 5. But whether this be so or no, I will not here determine, but 
appeal to every one's own experience, whether the shadow of a man, though 
it consist of nothing but the absence of light (and the more the absence of 
light is, the more discernible is the shadow) does not, when a man looks 
on it, cause as clear and positive idea in his mind, as a man himself, though 
covered over with a clear sunshine 1 and the picture of a shadow is a posi- 
tive thing. Indeed, we have negative names, which stand not directly for 
positive ideas, but for their absence, such as insipid, silence, nihil, &c. 
which words denote positive ideas ; v. g. taste, sound, being, with a sig- 
nification of their absence 1 

Sect. 6. Positive ideas from privative causes. — And thus one may 
truly be said to see darkness. For supposing a hole perfectly dark, from 
whence no light is reflected, it is certain one may see the figure of it, or 
it may be painted ; or whether the ink I write with makes any other idea, 
is a question. The privative causes I have here assigned of positive ideas 
are according to the common opinion : but in truth it will be hard to deter- 
mine whether there be really any ideas from a privative cause, till it be de- 
termined whether rest be any more a privation than motion. 

Sect. 7. Ideas in the mind, qualities in bodies. — To discover the nature 
of our ideas the better, and to discourse of them intelligibly, it will be con- 
venient to distinguish them as they are ideas or perceptions in our minds, 
and as they are modifications of matter in the bodies that cause such per- 
ceptions in us ; that so we may not think (as perhaps usually is done) that 
they are exactly the images and resemblances of something inherent in 
the subject; most of those of sensation being in the mind no more the like- 
ness of something existing without us, than the names that stand for them 
are the likeness of our ideas, which yet, upon hearing, they are apt to ex- 
cite in us. 

Sect. 8. Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate 
object of perception, thought, or understanding, that I call idea ; and the 
power to produce any idea in our mind I call quality of the subject wherein 
that power is. Thus a snowball having the power to produce in us the 
ideas of white, cold, and round, the powers to produce those ideas in us, 
as they are in the snowball, I call qualities ; and as they are sensations oi 
Derceptions in our understandings, I call them ideas; which ideas, if \ 



M OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

speak of sometimes as in the things themselves, I would be understood to 
mean those qualities in the objects which produce them in us. 

Sect. 9. Primary qualities. — Qualities thus considered in bodies are, 
first, such as are utterly inseparable from the body, in what estate soever 
it be ; such as in all the alterations and changes it suffers, all the force car- 
be used upon it, it constantly keeps ; and such as sense constantly finds in 
every particle of matter which has bulk enough to be perceived, and the 
mind finds inseparable from every particle of matter, though less than to 
make itself singly be perceived by our senses : v. g. take a grain of wheat, 
divide it into two parts, each part has still solidity, extension, figure, and 
mobility ; divide it again and it retains still the same qualities ; and so di- 
vide it on till the parts become insensible, they must retain still each of 
them all those qualities : for division (which is all that a mill, or pestle, 
or any other body does upon another, in reducing it to insensible parts) 
can never take away either solidity, extension, figure, or mobility from any 
body, but only makes two or more distinct separate masses of matter of 
that which was but one before ; all which distinct masses, reckoned as so 
many distinct bodies, after division, make a certain number. These I call 
original or primary qualities of body, which I think we may observe to 
produce simple ideas in us, viz. solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, 
and number. 

Sect. 10. Secondary qualities. — Secondly, such qualities which in truth 
are nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensa- 
tions in us by their primary qualities, i. e. by the bulk, figure, texture, and 
motion of their insensible parts, as colours, sounds, tastes, &c. these I call 
secondary qualities. To these might be added a third sort, which are al- 
lowed to be barely powers, though they are as much real qualities in the 
subject as those which I, to comply with the common way of speaking, 
call qualities, but for distinction, secondary qualities. For the power in 
fire to produce a new colour, or consistency, in wax or clay, by its primary 
qualities, is as much a quality in fire as the power it has to produce in me 
a new idea or sensation of warmth or burning, which I felt not before, by 
the same primary qualities, viz. the bulk, texture, and motion of its insen- 
sible parts. 

Sect. 11. How primary qualities produce their ideas. — The next thing 
to be considered is, how bodies produce ideas in us ; and that is manifestly 
by impulse, the only way which we can conceive bodies to operate in. 

Sect. 12. If then external objects be not united to our minds, when they 
produce ideas therein, and yet we perceive these original qualities in such 
of them as singly fall under our senses, it is evident that some motion 
must be thence continued by our nerves or animal spirits, by some parts 
of our bodies, to the brain, or the seat of sensation, there to produce in our 
minds the particular ideas we have of them. And since the extension, 
figure, number, and motion of bodies, of an observable bigness, may be per- 
ceived at a distance by the sight, it is evident some singly imperceptible 
bodies must come from them to the eyes, and thereby convey to the brain 
csome motion, which produces these ideas which we have of them in us. 

Sect. 13. How secondary. — After the same manner that the ideas of 
these original qualities are produced in us, we may conceive that the ideas 
of secondary qualities are also produced, viz. by the operations of insensi- 
ble particles on our senses. For it being manifest that there are bodies, 
each whereof are so small that we cannot, by any of our senses, discover 
either their bulk, figure, or motion, as is evident in the particles of the air 
and water, and others extremely smaller than those, perhaps as much small- 
er than the particles of air and water, as the particles of air and water are 
smaller than peae or hailstones; let us suppose at present, tha f the different 
motions and figures, bulk and number of such particles, affecting the se- 
veral organs of our senses, produce in us those different sensations, whicii 



Ch. 8. SIMPLE IDEAS. 95 

we have from the colours and smells of bodies ; v. g. that a violet, by the 
impulse of such insensible particles of matter of peculiar figures and bulks, 
and in different degrees and modifications of their motions, causes the 
ideas of the blue colour and sweet scent of that flower to be produced in 
our minds, it being no more impossible to conceive that God should annex 
such ideas to such motions, with which they have no similitude, than that 
he should annex the idea of pain to the motion of a piece of steel dividing 
our flesh, with which that idea hath no resemblance. 

Sect. 14. What I have said concerning colours and smells may be un- 
derstood also of tastes and sounds, and other the like sensible qualities ; 
which, whatever reality we by mistake attribute to them, are in truth noth- 
ing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in 
us, and depend on those primary qualities, viz. bulk, figure, texture, and 
motion of parts, as I have said. 

Sect. 15. Ideas of primary qualities are resemblances ; of secondary t 
not. — From whence I think it easy to draw this observation, that the ideas 
of primary qualities cf bodies are resemblances of them, and their patterns 
do really exist in the bodies themselves ; but the ideas produced in us by 
these secondary qualities have no resemblance of them at all. There is 
nothing like our ideas existing in the bodies themselves. They are in 
the bodies, we denominate from them, only a power to produce those sen- 
sations in us ; and what is sweet, blue, or warm in idea, is but the certain 
balk, figure, and motion of the insensible parts in the bodies themselves, 
which we call so. 

Sect. 16. Flame is denominated hot and light; snow white and cold; 
and manna white and sweet, from the ideas they produce in us : which 
qualities are commonly thought to be the same in those bodies that those 
ideas are in us, the one the perfect resemblance of the other, as they are in 
a mirror ; and it would by most men be judged very extravagant if one should 
say otherwise. And yet he that will consider that the same fire, that 
at one distance produces in us the sensation of warmth, does at a nearer 
approach produce in us the far different sensations of pain, ought to bethink 
himself what reason he has to say, that his idea of warmth, which was 
produced in him by the fire, is actually in the fire : and his idea of pain, 
which the same fire produced in him the same way, is not in the fire. 
Why are whiteness and coldness in snow, and pain not, when it produces 
the one and the other idea in us, and can do neither but by the bulk, figure, 
number, and motion of its solid parts. 

Sect. 17. The particular bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts 
of fire, or snow, are really in them, whether any one's senses perceive them 
or no ; and therefore they may be called real qualities, because they really 
exist in those bodies ; but light, heat, whiteness, or coldness, are no more 
really in them than sickness or pain is in manna. Take away the sensa- 
tion of them ; let not the eyes see light or colours, nor the ears hear sounds ; 
let the palate not taste, nor the nose smell; and all colours, tastes, odours, 
and sounds, as they are such particular ideas, vanish and cease, and are 
reduced to their causes, i. e. bulk, figure, and motion of parts. 

Sect. 18. A piece of manna of a sensible bulk is able to produce in us the 
idea of a round or square figure, and, by being removed from one place to 
another, the idea of motion. This idea of motion represents it as it really 
is in the manna moving : a circle or square are the same, whether in idea 
or existence, in the mind or in the manna ; and this both motion and figure 
are really in the manna, whether we take notice of them or no : this every 
body is ready to agree to. Besides, manna, by the bulk, figure, texture, 
and motion of its parts, has a power to produce the sensations of sickness, 
and sometimes of acute pains orgripings in us. That these ideas of sick- 
ness and pain are not in the manna, but effects of its operations on us, and 
are nowhere when we feel them not : this also every one readily agrees to. 



96 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

And yet men are hardly to be brought to think, that sweetness and white- 
ness are not really in manna ; which are but the effects of the operations 
of manna, by the motion, size, and figure of its particles on the eyes and 
palate ; as the pain and sickness caused by manna are confessedly nothing 
but the effects of its operation on the stomach and guts, by the size, mo- 
tion, and figure of its insensible parts (for by nothing else can a body 
operate, as has been proved ;) as if it could not operate on the eyes and 
palate, and thereby produce in the mind particular distinct ideas, which in 
itself it has not, as well as we allow it can operate on the guts and stom- 
ach, and thereby produce distinct ideas, which in itself it has not. These 
ideas being all effects of the operations of manna on several parts of our 
bodies, by the size, figure, number, and motion of its parts; why those pro- 
duced by the eyes and palate, should rather be thought to be really in the 
manna than those produced by the stomach and guts ; or why the pain and 
sickness, ideas that are the effects of manna, should be thought to be no- 
where when they are not felt ; and yet the sweetness and whiteness, effects 
of the same manna on other parts of the body, by ways equally as unknown, 
should be thought to exist in the manna, when they are not seen or tasted., 
would need some reason to explain. 

Sect. 19. Ideas of primary qualities are resemblances ; of secondary, not. 
— Let us consider the red and white colour in porphyry : hinder light from 
striking on it, and its colours vanish ; it no longer produces any such ideas 
in us ; upon the return of light it produces these appearances on us again. 
Can any one think any real alterations are made in the porphyry by the 
presence or absence of light: and that those ideas of whiteness and redness 
are really in porphyry in the light, when it is plain it has no colour in the 
dark] It has, indeed, such a configuration of particles, both night and day, 
as are apt by the rays of light rebounding from some parts of that hard 
stone, to produce in us the idea of redness, and from others the idea $' 
whiteness ; but whiteness or redness are not in it at any time, but such a 
texture, that hath the power to produce such a sensation in us. 

Sect. 20. Pound an almond, and the clear white colour will be altered 
into a dirty one, and the sweet taste into an oily one. What real altera- 
tion can the beating of the pestle make in any body, but an alteration' of 
the texture of it 1 

Sect. 21. Ideas being thus distinguished and understood, we may be able 
to give an account how the same water, at the same time, may produce the 
idea of cold by one hand, and of heat by the other ; whereas it is impossible 
that the same water, if those ideas were really in it, should at the same 
time be both hot and cold : for if we imagine warmth, as it is in our hands, 
to be nothing but a certain sort and degree of motion in the minute parti- 
cles of our nerves or animal spirits, we may understand how it is possible 
that the same water may, at the same time, produce the sensations of heat 
in one hand, and cold in the other ; which yet figure never does, 
that never producing the idea of a square by one hand, which has 
produced the idea of a globe by another. But if the sensation of heat and 
cold be nothing but the increase or diminution of the motion of the minute 
parts of our bodies, caused by the corpuscles of any other body, it is easy 
to be understood, that if that motion be greater in one hand than in the 
other ; if a body be applied to the two hands, which has in its minute 
particles a greater motion, than in those of one of the hands, and a less 
than in those of the other ; it will increase the motion of the one hand, 
and lessen it in the other, and so cause the different sensations of heat and 
cold that depend thereon. 

Sect. 22. I have in what just goes before been engaged in physical in- 
quiries a little farther than perhaps I intended. But it being necessary to 
nake the nature of sensation a little understood, and to make the differ- 
ence between the qualities in bodies and the ideas produced by them in the 



Ch. 8. SIMPLE IDEAS. 97 

mind, to be distinctly conceived, without which it were impossible to dis- 
course intelligibly of them, I hope I shall be pardoned this little excursion 
into natural philosophy, it being necessary in our present inquiry to dis- 
tinguish the primary and real qualities of bodies, which are always in them 
(viz. solidity, extension, figure, number, and motion or rest ; and are 
sometimes perceived by us, viz. when the bodies they are in are Dig enough 
singly to be discerned) from those secondary and imputed qualities, which 
are but the powers of several combinations of those primary ones, when 
they operate, without being distinctly discerned; whereby we may also 
come to know what ideas are, and what are not, resemblances of something 
really existing in the bodies we denominate from them. 

Sect. 23. Three sorts of qualities in bodies. — The qualities then that 
are in bodies, rightly considered, are of three sorts. 

First, The bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion or rest of their 
solid parts; those are in them, whether we perceive them or no; and 
when they are of that size that we can discover them, we have by these 
an idea of the thing, as it is in itself, as is plain in artificial things. These 
I call primary qualities. 

Secondly, The power that is in any body, by reason of its insensible 
primary qualities, to operate after a peculiar manner on any of our senses, 
and thereby produce in us the different ideas of several colours, sounds, 
smells, tastes, &c. These are usually called sensible qualities. 

Thirdly, The power that is in any body, by reason of the particular con- 
stitution of its primary qualities, to make such a change in the bulk, figure, 
texture, and motion of another body, as to make it operate on our senses, 
differently from what it did before. Thus the sun has a power to make 
wax white, and fire to make lead fluid. These are usually called powers. 
The first of these, as has been said, I think may be properly called real, 
original, or primary qualities, because they are in the things themselves, 
whether they are perceived or no ; and upon their different modifications 
it is, that the secondary qualities depend. 

The other two are only powers to act differently upon other things, 
which powers result from the different modifications of those primary 
qualities. 

Sect. 24. The first are resemblances. The second thought resem- 
blances, but are not. The third neither are, nor are thought so. — But 
though the two latter sorts of qualities are powers barely, and nothing but 
powers, relating to several other bodies, and resulting from the different 
modifications of the original qualities, yet they are generally otherwise 
though* of: for the second sort, viz. the powers to produce several ideas in 
us by our senses, are looked upon as real qualities, in the things thus 
affecting us ; but the third sort are called and esteemed barely powers, v. g. 
the idea of heat or light, which we receive by our eyes or touch from the 
sun, are commonly thought real qualities, existing in the sun, and some- 
thing more than mere powers in it. But when we consider the sun, in 
reference to wax, which it melts or blanches, we look on the whiteness and 
softness produced in the wax, not as qualities in the sun, but effects pro- 
duced by powers in it: whereas, if rightly considered, these qualities of 
light and warmth, which are perceptions in me when I am warmed or en- 
lightened by the sun, are no otherwise in the sun, than the changes made 
in the wax, when it is blanched or melted, are in the sun. They are all 
of them equally powers in the sun, depending on its primary qualities ; 
whereby it is able, in the one case, so to alter the bulk, figure, texture, or 
motion of some of the insensible parts of my eyes or hands, as thereby to 
produce in me the idea of light or heat ; and in the other, it is able so to 
alter the bulk, figure, texture, or motion of the insensible parts of the wax, 
as to make them fit to produce in me the distinct ideas of white and fluid. 
Sect. 25. The reason why the one are ordinarily taken for real qualities, 
N 



98 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

and the other only for bare powers, seems to be because the ideas we have 
of distinct colours, sounds, &c. containing nothing at all in them of bulk, 
figure, or motion, we are not apt to think them the effects of these primary 
qualities, which appear not, to our senses, to operate in their production ; 
and with which they have not any apparent congruity, or conceivable con- 
nexion. Hence it is that we are so forward to imagine, that those ideas 
are the resemblances of something really existing in the objects themselves ; 
since sensation discovers nothing of bulk, figure, or motion of parts in 
their production ; nor can reason show how bodies, by their bulk, figure, 
and motion, should produce in the mind the ideas of blue or yellow, &c. 
But in the other case, in the operations of bodies changing the qualities 
one of another, we plainly discover, that the quality produced hath com- 
monly no resemblance with any thing in the thing producing it : wherefore 
we look on it as a bare effect of power. For though receiving the idea 
of heat or light from the sun, we are apt to think it is a perception and re- 
semblance of such a quality in the sun ; yet when we see wax, or a fair 
face, receive change of colour from the sun, we cannot imagine that to be 
the reception or resemblance of any thing in the sun, because we find not 
those different colours in the sun itself. For our senses being able to ob- 
serve a likeness orunlikeness of sensible qualities in two different external 
objects, we forwardly enough conclude the production of any sensible 
quality in any subject to be an effect of bare power, and not the communi- 
cation of any quality, which was really in the efficient, when we find no 
such sensible quality in the thing that produced it. But our senses not 
being able to discover any unlikeness between the idea produced in us, and 
the quality of the object producing it, we are apt to imagine that our ideas 
are resemblances of something in the objects, and not the effects of certain 
powers placed in the modification of their primary qualities, with which 
primary qualities the ideas produced in us have no resemblance. 

Sect. 26. Secondary qualities twofold ; first, immediately perceivable; 
secondly, mediately 'perceivable. — To conclude : beside those before-men- 
tioned primary qualities in bodies, viz. bulk, figure, extension, number, and 
motion of their solid parts; all the rest whereby we take notice of bodies, 
and distinguish them one from another, are nothing else but several pow- 
ers in them depending on those primary qualities ; whereby they are fitted, 
either by immediately operating on our bodies to produce several different 
ideas in us ; or else, by operating on other bodies, so to change their primary 
qualities, as to render them capable of producing ideas in us different from 
what before they did. The former of these, I think, may be called secon- 
dary qualities, immediately perceivable : the latter, secondary qualities, 
mediately perceivable. 



CHAPTER IX. 

OF PERCEPTION. 

Sect. 1. Perception the first simple idea of reflection. — Perception, as 
it is the first faculty of the mind, exercised about our ideas ; so it is the first 
and simplest idea we have from reflection, and is by some called thinking 
in general. Though thinking, in the propriety of the English tongue, sig- 
nifies that sort of operation in the mind about its ideas, wherein the mind 
is active ; where it, with some degree of voluntary attention, considers 
any thing. For in bare naked perception, the mind is, for the most part, 
only passive ; and what it perceives, it cannot avoid perceiving. 

Sect. 2. Perceptionis only when the mind receives the impression. — Wha . 
perception is, every one wili know better by reflecting on what he does him 



Ch. 9. OF PERCEPTION. 99 

self, what he sees, hears, feels, &c. or thinks, than by any discourse of 
mine. Whoever reflects on what passes in his own mind, cannot miss it . 
and if he does not reflect, all the words in the world cannot make him have 
any notion of it. 

Sect. 3. This is certain, that whatever alterations are made in the body, 
if they reach not the mind ; whatever impressions are made on the outward 
parts, if they are not taken notice of within; there is no perception. Fire 
may burn our bodies, with no other effect than it does a billet, unless the 
motion be continued to the brain, and there the sense of heat, or idea of 
pain, be produced in the mind, wherein consists actual perception. 

Sect. 4. How often may a man observe in himself, that whilst his mind 
is intently employed in the contemplation of some objects, and curiously 
surveying some ideas that are there, it takes no notice of impressions of 
sounding- bodies made upon the organ of hearing with the same alteration 
that uses to be for the producing the idea of sound. A sufficient impulse 
there may be on the organ; but if not reaching the observation of the mind, 
there follows no perception ; and though the motion that uses to produce 
the idea of sound be made in the ear, yet no sound is heard. Want of 
sensation, in this case, is not through any defect in the organ, or that the 
man's ears are less affected than at other times when he does hear : but 
that which uses to produce the idea, though conveyed in by the usual or- 
gan, not being taken notice of in the understanding, and so imprinting no 
idea in the mind, there follows no sensation. So that wherever there is 
sense, or perception there some idea is actually produced and present in 
the understanding. 

Sect. 5. Children, though they have ideas in the womb, have none in- 
nate. — Therefore, I doubt not but children, by the exercise of their senses 
about objects that affect them in the womb, receive some few ideas before 
they are born ; as the unavoidable effects, either of the bodies that environ 
them, or else of those wants or diseases they suffer : among which (if one 
may conjecture concerning things not very capable of examination) I think 
the ideas of hunger and warmth are two; which probably are some of the 
first that children have, and which they scarce ever part with again. 

Sect. 6. But though it be reasonable to imagine that children receive 
some ideas before they come into the world, yet those simple ideas are far 
from those innate principles which some contend for, and we above have 
rejected. These here mentioned being the effects of sensation, are only 
from some affections of the body, which happen to them there, and so de- 
pend on something exterior to the mind ; no otherwise differing in their 
manner of production from other ideas derived from sense, but only in the 
precedency of time ; whereas those innate principles are supposed to be 
quite of another nature, not coming into the mind by any accidental alter- 
ations in, or operations on, the body; but, as it were, original characters 
impressed upon it in the very first moment of its being and constitution. 

Sect. 7. Which ideas first, is not evident. — As there are some ideas 
which we may reasonably suppose may be introduced into the minds of 
children in the womb, subservient to the necessities of their life and being 
there ; so, after they are born, those ideas are the earliest imprinted which 
happen to be the sensible qualities which first occur to them : among which 
light is not the least considerable, nor of the weakest efficacy. And how 
covetous the mind is to be furnished with all such ideas as have no pain ac- 
companying them, may be a little guessed by what is observable in chil 
dren new-born, who always turn their eyes to that part from whence the 
light comes, lay them how you please. But the ideas that are most familiar 
at first being various, according to the divers circumstances of children's first 
entertainment in the world, the order wherein the several ideas come at first 
into the mind is very various and uncertain also ; neither is it much material 
to know it 



100 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2, 

Sect. 8. Ideas of sensation often changed by the judgment. — We are 
further to consider concerning perception, that the ideas we receive by sen- 
sation are often in grown people altered by the judgment, without our taking 
notice of it. When we set before our eyes a round globe, of any uniform co- 
lour, v. g. gold, alabaster, or jet, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted 
in our mind is of aflat circle variously shadowed, with several degrees of 
light and brightness coming to our eyes ; but we having by use been accus- 
tomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make 
in us, what alterations are made in the reflections of light by the difference 
of the sensible figures of bodies, the judgment presently, by an habitual cus- 
tom, alters the appearances into their causes ; so that from that which is truly 
variety of shadow or colour, collecting the figure it makes it pass for a mark 
or figure, and frames to itself the perception of a convex figure and a uniform 
colour: when the idea we receive from thence is only a plane, variously co- 
loured, as is evident in painting. To which purpose I shall here insert a pro- 
blem of that ingenious and studious promoter of real knowledge, the learn- 
ed and worthy Mr Molineaux, which he was pleased to send me in a letter 
some months since ; and it is this : suppose a man born blind and now adult, 
and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the 
same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell when he felt one 
and the other, which is the cube, which the sphere. Suppose then the cube 
and the sphere placed on a table, and the blind man be made to see : quaere, 
"whether by his sight, before he touched them, he could now distinguish and 
tell which is the globe, which the cube]" to which the acute and judicious 
proposer answers, not. For though he has obtained the experience of how 
a globe, how a cube affects his touch; yet he has not yet obtained the ex- 
perience, that what affects his touch so or so, must affect his sight so or 
so ; or that a protuberant angle in the cube that pressed his hand unequally 
shall appear to his eye as it does in the cube. I agree with this thinking 
gentleman, whom I am proud to call my friend, in his answer to this his 
problem ; and am of opinion that the blind man, at first sight, would not 
be able with certainty to say, which was the globe, which the cube, whilst 
he only saw them : though he could unerringly name them by his touch, 
and certainly distinguish them by the difference of their figures felt. This 
I have set down, and leave with my reader, as an occasion for him to con- 
sider how much he may be beholden to experience, improvement, and ac- 
quired notions, where he thinks he had not the least use of, or help from 
them: and the rather, because this observing gentleman farther adds, that 
having, upon the occasion of my book, proposed this to divers very inge- 
nious men, he hardly ever met with one, that at first gave the answer to it 
which he thinks true, till by hearing his reasons they were convinced. 

Sect. 9. But this is not, I think, usual in any of our ideas but those 
received by sight : because sight, the most comprehensive of all our sen 
ses, conveying to our minds the ideas of light and colours, which are pe- 
culiar only to that sense; and also the far different ideas of space, figure, 
and motion, the several varieties whereof change the appearance of its 
proper object, viz. light and colours ; we bring ourselves by use to judge of 
the one by the other. This, in many cases, by a settled habit, in things 
whereof we have frequent experience, is performed so constantly, and so 
quick, that we take that for the reception of our sensation which is an idea 
formed by our judgment : so that one, viz, that of sensation, serves only 
to excite the other, and is scarce taken notice of itself: as a man who reads 
or hears with attention and understanding, takes little notice of the char- 
acters or sounds, but of the ideas that are excited in him by them. 

Sect. 10. Nor need we wonder that this is done with so little notice, 
if we consider how very quick the actions of the mind are performed: for 
as itself is thought to take up no space, to have no extension, so its ac- 
tions seem to require no time, but many of them seem to be crowded int« 



Ch. 9. OF PERCEPTION. 101 

an instant. I speak this in comparison to the actions of the body. Any- 
one may easily observe this in his own thoughts, who will take the pains 
to reflect on them. How, as it were in an instant, do our minds with one 
glance see all the parts of a demonstration, which may very well be called 
a long one, if we consider the time it will require to put it into words, and 
step by step show it another] Secondly, we shall not be so much surprised 
that this is done in us with so little notice, if we consider how the facility 
which we get of doing things, by a custom of doing, makes them often pass 
in us without our notice. Habits, especially such as are begun very early, 
come at last to produce actions in us which often escape our observation. 
How frequently do we, in a day, cover our eyes with out eyelids, without 
perceiving that we are at all in the dark I Men that by custom have got 
the use of a by-word, do almost in every sentence pronounce sounds which, 
though taken notice of by others, they themselves neither hear nor observe ; 
and therefore it is not so strange that our mind should often change the 
idea of its sensation into that of its judgment, and make one serve only to 
excite the other, without our taking notice of it. 

Sect. 11. Perception puts the difference between animals and inferior 
beings. — This faculty of perception seems to me to be that which puts the 
distinction betwixt the animal kingdom and the inferior parts of nature. 
For however vegetables have, many of them, some degrees of motion, and 
upon the different application of other bodies to them, do very briskly alter 
their figures and motions, and so have obtained the name of sensitive plants, 
from a motion which has some resemblance to that which in animals follows 
upon sensation ; yet I suppose it is all bare mechanism, and no otherwise 
produced than the turning of a wild oat-beard, by the insinuation of the 
particles of moisture, or the shortening of a rope by the affusion of water ; 
all which is done without any sensation in the subject, or the having or 
receiving any ideas. 

Sect. 12. Perception, I believe, is in some degree in all sorts of animals ; 
though in some, possibly, the avenues provided by nature for the reception 
of sensations are so few, and the perception they are received with so ob- 
scure and dull, that it comes extremely short of the quickness and variety 
of sensation which are in other animals ; but yet it is sufficient for, and 
wisely adapted to, the state and condition of that sort of animals who are 
thus made; so that the wisdom and goodness of the Maker plainly appear 
in all the parts of this stupendous fabric, and all the several degrees and 
ranks of creatures in it. 

Sect. 13. We may, I think, from the make of an oyster or cockle, reason- 
ably conclude that it has not so many nor so quick senses as a man, or 
several other animals ; nor if it had, would it, in that state and incapacity 
of transferring itself from one place to another, be bettered by them. 
What good would sight and hearing do to a creature that cannot move 
itself to or from the objects wherein at a distance it perceives good or evil? 
And would not quickness of sensation be an inconvenience to an animal 
that must lie still, where chance has once placed it ; and there receive the 
afflux of colder or warmer, clean or foul water, as it happens to come to it ? 

Sect. 14. But yet I cannot but think there is some small dull perception 
whereby they are distinguished from perfect insensibility. And that this 
may be so, we have plain instances even in mankind itself. Take one, in 
whom decrepit old age has blotted out the memory of his past knowledge, 
and clearly wiped out the ideas his mind was formerly stored with : and 
has, by destroying his sight, hearing, and smell quite, and his taste to a 
great degree, stopped up almost all the passages for new ones to enter; or, 
if there be some of the inlets yet half open, the impressions made are scarce 
perceived, or not at all retained. How far such an one (notwithstanding 
all that is boasted of innate principles) is in his knowledge and irtellectual 
faculties above the condition of a cockle or an oyster, I leave to be consul- 



103 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

ered. And if a man had passed sixty years in such a state, as it is possi- 
ble he might, as well as three days, I wonder what difference there would 
have been, in any intellectual perfections, between him and the lowest de- 
gree of animals. 

Sect. 15. Perception the inlet of knowledge. — Perception then being 
the first step and degree towards knowledge, and the inlet of all the mate- 
rials of it, the fewer senses any man, as well as any other creature, hath, 
and the fewer and duller the impressions are that are made by them, and 
the duller the faculties are that are employed about them, the more remote 
are they from that knowledge which is to be found in some men. But this 
being in great variety of degrees (as may be perceived among men) cannot 
certainly be discovered in the several species of animals, much less in their 
particular individuals. It suffices me only to have remarked here, that per- 
ception is the first operation of all our intellectual faculties, and the inlet 
of all knowledge in our minds : and I am apt, too, to imagine that it is 
perception, in the lowest degree of it, which puts the boundaries between 
animals and the inferior ranks of creatures. But this I mention only as 
my conjecture by the by ; it being indifferent to the matter in hand which 
way the learned shall determine of it. 



CHAPTER X. 

OF RETENTION. 

Sect. 1. Contemplation. — The next faculty of the mind, whereby it 
makes a farther progress toward knowledge, is that which I call retention, 
or the keeping of those simple ideas which from sensation or reflection it 
hath received. This is done two ways ; first by keeping the idea, which 
is brought into it, for some time actually in view ; which is called con- 
templation. 

Sect. 2. Memory. — The other way of retention is the power to revive 
again in our minds those ideas which, after imprinting, have disappeared, 
or have been as it were laid aside out of sight : and thus we do when we 
conceive heat or light, yellow or sweet, the object being removed. This is 
memory, which is as it were the store-house of our ideas. For the narrow 
mind of man not being capable of having many ideas under view and con- 
sideration at once, it was necessary to have a repository to lay up those 
ideas, which at another time it might have use of. But our ideas be- 
ing nothing but actual perceptions in the mind, which cease to be any 
thing when there is no perception of them, this laying up of our ideas in 
the repository of the memory signifies no more but this, that the mind has 
a power in many cases to revive perceptions which it once had, with this 
additional perception annexed to them, that it has had them before. And in 
this sense it is, that our ideas are said to be in our memories, when indeed 
they are actually nowhere, but only there is an ability in the mind when it 
will to revive them again, and as it were paint them anew on itself, though 
some with more, some with less difficulty ; some more lively, and others more 
obscurely. And thus it is, by the assistance of this faculty, that we are to 
have all those ideas in our understandings, which, though we do not actually 
contemplate, yet we can bring in sight, and make appear again, and be the 
objects of our thoughts, without the help of those sensible qualities which 
first imprinted them there. 

Sect. 3. Attention, repetition, pleasure, and pain, fix ideas. — Attention 
and repetition nelp much to the fixing any ideas in the memory : but those 
>vnich natually at first make the deepest and most lasting impression are 
those which are accompanied with pleasure or pain. The great business 



Ch. 10. OF RETENTION. 103 

of the senses being to make us take notice of what hurts or advantages the 
body, it is wisely ordered by nature (as has been shown) that pain should 
accompany the reception of several ideas : which supplying the place of 
consideration and reasoning in children, and acting quicker than considera- 
tion in grown men, makes both the old and young avoid painful objects 
with that haste which is necessary for their preservation ; and, in both, 
settles in the memory a caution for the future. 

Sect. 4. Ideas fade in the memory. — Concerning the several degrees of 
lasting, wherewith ideas are imprinted on the memory, we may observe 
that some of them have been produced in the understanding by an object 
affecting the senses once only, and no more than once ; others, that have 
more than once offered themselves to the senses, have yet been little taken 
notice of: the mind either heedless, as in children, or otherwise employed, 
as in men, intent only on one thing, not setting the stamp deep into itself: 
and in some, where they are set on with care and repeated impressions, 
either through the temper of the body, or some other fault, the memory is 
very weak. In all these cases, ideas in the mind quickly fade, and often 
vanish quite out of the understanding, leaving no more footsteps or remain- 
ing characters of themselves than shadows do flying over fields of corn ; 
and the mind is as void of them as if they had never been there. 

Sect. 5. Thus many of those ideas which were produced in the minds 
of children, in the beginning of their sensation, (some of which, perhaps, 
as of some pleasures and pains, were before they were born, and others in 
their infancy,) if in the future course of their lives they are not repeated 
again, are quite lost, without the least glimpse remaining of them. This 
may be observed in those who by some mischance have lost their sight 
when they were very young, in whom the ideas of colours having been but 
slightly taken notice of, and ceasing to be repeated, do quite wear out ; so 
that some years after there is no more notion nor memory of colours left 
in their minds than in those of people born blind. The memory of some, 
it is true, is very tenacious, even to a miracle : but yet there seems to be 
a constant decay of all our ideas, even of those which are struck deepest, 
and in minds the most retentive; so that if they be not sometimes renewed 
by repeated exercises of the senses, or, reflection on those kinds of objects 
which at first occasioned them, the print wears out, and at last there re- 
mains nothing to be seen. Thus the ideas, as well as children of our youth, 
often die before Vis : and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we 
are approaching; where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the in- 
scriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away. The 
pictures drawn in our minds are laid in fading colours, and if not sometimes 
refreshed, vanish and disappear. How much the constitution "of our bodies 
and the make of our animal spirits are concerned in this, and whether the 
temper of the brain makes this difference, that in some it retains the 
characters draws on it like marble, in others like freestone, and in others 
little better than sand, I shall not here inquire ; though it may seem pro- 
bable, that the constitution of the body does sometimes influence the 
memory; since we oftentimes find a disease quite strip the mind of all its 
ideas, and the flames of a fever in a few days calcine all those images to 
dust and confusion, which seemed to be as lasting as if graved in marble. 

Sect. 6. Constantly repeated ideas can scarce be lost. — But concerning 
the ideas themselves, it is easy to remark that those that are oftenest re- 
freshed (among which are those that are conveyed into the mind by more 
ways than one) by a frequent return of the objects or actions that produce 
them, fix themselves best in the memory, and remain clearest and longest 
there: and therefore those which are of the original qualities of bodies, viz. 
solidity, extension, figure, motion, and rest; and those that almost con- 
stantly affect our bodies, as heat and cold : and those which are the affec- 
tions of all kinds of beings, as existence, duration and number, which 



104 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

almost every object that affects our senses, every thought which employs 
oar minds, bring along with them : these, I say, and the like ideas, are 
seldom quite lost whilst the mind retains any ideas at all. 

Sect. 7. In remembering, the mind is often active. — In this secondary 
perception, as I may so call it, or viewing again the ideas that are lodged in 
the memory, the mind is oftentimes more than barely passive ; the appear- 
ance of those dormant pictures depending sometimes on the will. The 
mind very often sets itself on work in search of some hidden idea, and 
urns as it were the eye of the soul upon it ; though sometimes too they 
start up in our minds of their own accord, and offer themselves to the un- 
derstanding ; and very often are roused and tumbled out of their dark cells 
into open daylight by turbulent and tempestuous passions, our affections 
bringing ideas to our memory, which had otherwise lain quiet and unre- 
garded. This farther is to be observed, concerning ideas lodged in the me- 
mory, and upon occasion revived by the mind, that they are not only (as 
the word revive imports) none of them new ones : but also that the mind 
takes notice of them, as of a former impression, and renews its acquaintance 
with them as with ideas it had known before ; so that though ideas formerly 
imprinted are not all constantly in view, yet in remembrance they are con- 
stantly known to be such as have been formerly imprinted, i. e. in view, 
and taken notice of before by the understanding. 

Sect. 8. Two defects in the memory, oblivion and slowness. — Memory, in 
an intellectual creature, is necessary in the the next degree to perception. 
It is of so great moment, that where it is wanting, all the rest of our 
faculties are in a great measure useless ; and we, in our thoughts, reason- 
ings, and knowledge, could not proceed beyond present objects, were it not 
for the assistance of our memories, wherein there maybe two defects. 

First, That it loses the idea quite, and so far it produces perfect igno- 
rance; for since we can know nothing farther than we have the idea 
of it, when that is gone, we are in perfect ignorance. 

Secondly, That it moves slowly, and retrieves not the ideas that it has, 
and are laid up in store, quick enough to serve the mind upon occasion. 
This, if it be to a great degree, is stupidity; and he who, through this default 
in his memory, has not the ideas that are really preserved there ready at 
hand when need and occasion call for them, were almost as good be without 
them quite, since they serve him to little purpose. The dull man, who 
loses the opportunity whilst he is seeking in his mind for those ideas that 
should serve his turn, is not much more happy in his knowledge than one 
that is perfectly ignorant. It is the business therefore of the memory to fur- 
nish to the mind those dormant ideas which it has present occasion for; 
in the having them ready at hand on all occasions consists that which we call 
invention, fancy, and quickness of parts. 

Sect. 9. These are defects, we may observe, in the memory of one man 
compared with another. There is another defect which we may conceive 
to be in the memory of man in general, compared with some superior 
created intellectual beings, which in this faculty may so far excel man, 
that they may have constantly in view the whole scene of all their former 
actions, wherein no one of the thoughts they have ever had may slip out 
of their sight. The omniscience of God, who knows all things, past, pre- 
sent, and to come, and to whom the thoughts of men's hearts always lie 
open, may satisfy us of the possibility of this. For who can doubt but God 
may communicate to those glorious spirits, his immediate attendants, any 
of his perfections, in what proportions he pleases, as far as created finite 
beings can be capable! It is reported of that prodigy of parts, Monsieur 
Pascal, that till the decay of his health had impaired his memory, he for- 
got nothing of what he had done, read, or thought, in any part of his 
rational age. This is a privilege so little known to most men, that it 
seems almost incredible to those who, after the ordinary way, measure all 



Ch. 10. OF RETENTION 105 

others by themseives : but yet, when considered, may help us to enlarge 
our thoughts towards greater perfection of it in superior ranks of spirits. 
For this of Mr Pascal was still with the narrowness that human minds are 
confined* to here, of having great variety of ideas only by succession, not 
all at once ; whereas the several degrees of angels may probably have 
larger views, and some of them be endowed with capacities able to retain 
together, and constantly set before them, as in one picture, all their past 
knowledge at once. This, we may conceive, would be no small advantage 
to the knowledge of a thinking man, if all his past thoughts and reasonings 
could be always present to him : and therefore we may suppose it one of 
those ways wherein the knowledge of separate spirits may exceedingly 
surpass ours. 

Sect. 10. Brutes have memory. — This faculty of laying up and retain- 
mg the ideas that are brought into the mind, several other animals seem 
to have to a great degree, as well as man : for, to pass by other instances, 
birds learning of tunes, and the endeavours one may observe in them to hit 
the notes right, put it past doubt with me that they have perception, and 
retain ideas in their memories, and use them for patterns : for it seems to 
me impossible that they should endeavour to conform their voices to notes 
(as it is plain they do) of which they had no ideas. For though I should 
grant sound may mechanically cause a certain motion of the animals spirits, 
in the brains of those birds, whilst the tune is actually playing; and that 
motion may be continued on to the muscles of the wings, and so the bird 
mechanically be driven away by certain noises, because this may tend to 
the bird's preservation ; yet that can never be supposed a reason why it 
should cause mechanically, either whilst the tune is playing, much less after 
it has ceased, such a motion of the organs in the bird's voice, as should con- 
form it to the notes of a foreign sound, which imitation can be of no use to 
the bird's preservation. But, which is more, it cannot with any appear- 
ance of reason be supposed (much less proved) that birds, without sense 
and memory, can approach their notes nearer and nearer by degrees to a 
tune played yesterday, which, if they have no idea of in their memory, is 
nowhere, nor can be a pattern for them to imitate, or which any repeated 
essays can bring them nearer to : since there is no reason why the sound 
of a pipe should leave traces in their brains, which, not at first, but by their 
after endeavours, should produce the like sounds ; and why the sounds they 
make themselves should not make traces which they should follow, as well 
as those of the pipe, is impossible to conceive. 



CHAPTER XI. 

OF DISCERNING AND OTHER OPERATIONS OF THE MIND. 

Sect. 1. No knowledge without discernment. — Another faculty we may 
take notice of in our minds, is that of discerning and distinguishing between 
the several ideas it has. It is not enough to have a confused perception 
of something in general : unless the mind had a distinct perception of differ- 
ent objects, and their qualities, it would be capable of very little knowledge, 
though the bodies that affect us were as busy about us as they are now, and 
the mind were continually employed in thinking. On this faculty of distin- 
guishing one thing from another depends the evidence and certainty of 
several, even very general propositions, which have passed for innate truths ; 
because men overlooking the true cause why those propositions find univer- 
sal assent, impute it wholly to native uniform impressions, whereas in truth 
it depends upon this clear discerning faculty of the mind, whereby it perceives 
two ideas to be the same or different. But of this more hereafter. 
O 



106 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 5 

Sect. 2. The difference of wit and judgment. — How much the impel 
lection of accurately discriminating ideas one from another lies either ii« 
the dulness or faults of the organs of sense, or want of acuteness* exercise, 
or attention in the understanding, or hastiness and precipitancy, natura„ 
to some tempers, I will not here examine ; it suffices to take notice, that 
this is one of the operations that the mind may reflect on and observe in 
itself. It is of that consequence to its other knowledge, that so far as this 
faculty is in itself dull, or not rightly made use of, for the distinguishing 
one thing from another, so far our notions are confused, and our reason 
and judgment disturbed or misled. If in having our ideas in the memory 
ready at hand consists quickness of parts : in this of having them unconfused, 
and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there 
is but the least difference, consists, in a great measure, the exactness of 
judgment and clearness of reason, which is to be observed in one man above 
another. And hence perhaps may be given some reason of that common 
observation, that men who have a great deal of wit, and prompt memories, 
have not always the clearest judgment or deepest reason : for wit lying 
most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness 
and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby 
to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy ; judgment, 
on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully, one 
from another, ideas, wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to 
avoid being misledby similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for another. 
This is a way of proceeding quite contrary to metaphor and allusion, wherein 
for the most part lies that entertainment and pleasantry of wit which strikes 
so lively on the fancy, and therefore is so acceptable to all people, because its 
beauty appears at first sight, and there is required no labour of thought to ex- 
amine what truth or reason there is in it. The mind, without looking any 
further, rests satisfied with the agreeableness of the picture, and the gayety 
of the fancy ; and it is a kind of an affront to go about to examine it by the se- 
vere rules of truth and good reason ; whereby it appears that it consists in 
something that is not perfectly conformable to them. 

Sect. 3. Clearness alone hinders confusion. — To the well distinguishing 
our ideas, it chiefly contributes that they be clear and determinate; and 
where they are so, it will not breed any confusion or mistake about them, 
though the senses should (as sometimes they do) convey them from the 
same object differently on different occasions, and so seem to err : for 
though a man in a fever should from sugar have a bitter taste, which at 
another time would produce a sweet one, yet the idea of bitter in that man's 
mind would be as clear and distinct from the idea of sweet as if he had 
tasted only gall. Nor does it make any more confusion between the two 
ideas of sweet and bitter, that the same sort of body produces at one time 
one, and at another time another idea by the taste, than it makes a confu- 
sion in two ideas of white and sweet, or white and round, that the same 
piece of sugar produces them both in the mind at the same time. And the 
ideas of orange colour and azure that are produced in the mind by the same 
parcel of inmsion of lignum nephriticum, are no less distinct ideas than 
those of the same colours taken from two very different bodies. 

Sect. 4. Comparing. — The comparing them one with another, in res- 
pect of extent, degrees, time, place, or any other circumstances, is another 
operation of the mind about its ideas, and is that upon which depends all 
that large tribe of ideas comprehended under relations ; which of how vast 
an extent it is, I shall have occasion to consider hereafter. 

Sect. 5. Brutes compare but imperfectly. — How far brutes partake in 
this faculty is not easy to determine ; I imagine they have it not in any 
great degree ; for though they probably have several ideas distinct enough, 
yet it seems to me to be the prerogative of human understanding, wnen r< 
has sufficiently distinguished any ideas so as to perceive them to be per - 



Ch. 11 DISCERNING. 107 

fectly different, and so consequently two, to cast about and consider in what 
circumstances they are capable to be compared ; and, therefore, I think 
beasts compare not their ideas farther than some sensible circumstances 
annexed to the objects themselves. The other power of comparing, which 
may be observed in men, belonging to general ideas, and useful only to ab- 
stract reasonings, we may probably conjecture beasts have not. 

Sect. 6. Compounding. — The next operation we may observe in the 
mind about its ideas, is composition, whereby it puts together several of those 
simple ones it has received from sensation and reflection, and combines 
them into complex ones. Under this of composition may be reckoned also 
that of enlarging, wherein, though the composition does not so much ap- 
pear as in more complex ones, yet it is nevertheless a putting several ideas 
together, though of the same kind. Thus, by adding several units together, 
we make the idea of a dozen ; and putting together the repeated ideas of 
several perches, we frame that of a furlong. 

Sect 7. Brutes compound but little. — In this, also, I suppose, brutes 
come far short ctf" men ; for though they take in and retain together several 
combinations of simple ideas, as possibly the shape, smell, and voice of his 
master, make up the complex idea a dog has of him, or rather are so many 
distinct marks whereby he knows him; yet I do not think they do of 
themselves ever compound them, and make complex ideas. And perhaps, 
even where we think they have complex ideas, it is only one simple one 
that directs them in the knowledge of several things, which possibly they 
distinguish less by their sight than we imagine ; for I have been credibly 
informed that a bitch will nurse, play with, and be fond of young foxes, as 
much as, and in place of, her puppies, if you can but get them once to suck 
her so long that her milk may go through them. And those animals which 
have a numerous brood of young ones at once, appear not to have any 
knowledge of their number; for though they are mightily concerned for any 
of their young that are taken from them whilst they are in sight or hearing, 
yet if one or two of them be stolen from them in their absence, or with- 
out noise, they appear not to miss them, or to have any sense that their 
number is lessened. 

Sect. 8. Naming. — When children have, by repeated sensations, got 
ideas fixed in their memories, they begin by degrees to learn the use of signs. 
And when they have got the skill to apply the organs of speech to the framing 
of articulate sounds, they begin to make use of words to signify their ideas 
to others. These verbal signs they sometimes borrow from others, and 
sometimes make themselves, as one may observe among the new and un- 
usual names children often give to things in the first use of language. 

Seot. 9. Abstraction. — The use of words then being to stand as out- 
ward marks of our internal ideas, and those ideas being taken from particu- 
lar things, if every particular idea that we take in should have a distinct 
name, names must be endless. To prevent this, the mind makes the par- 
ticular ideas, received from particular objects, to become general ; which 
is done by considering them as they are in the mind, such appearances, 
separate from all other existences, and the circumstances of real existence, as 
time, place, or any other concomitant ideas. This is called abstraction, 
whereby ideas, taken from particular beings, becomes general representatives 
of all of the same kind, and their names general names, applicable to what- 
ever exists conformable to such abstract ideas. Such precise naked appear- 
ances on the mind, without considering how, whence, or with what others 
they came there, the understanding lays up (with names commonly annexed to 
them) as the standard to rank real existences into sorts, as they agree with 
these patterns, and to denominate them accordingly. Thus the same colour 
being observed to-day in chalk or snow, which the mind yesterday received 
from milk, it considers that appearance alone makes it a representative of 
all of that kind ; and having given it the name whiteness, it by that sound sig- 



109 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2, 

nines the same quality, wheresoever to be imagined or met with : and thus 
universals, whether ideas or terms, are made. 

Sect. 10. Brutes abstract not. — If it may be doubted, whether beasts 
compound and enlarge their ideas that way to any degree ; this, I think, I 
may be positive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and 
that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction be- 
tween man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes 
do by no means attain to. For it is evident we observe no footsteps in 
them of making use of general signs for universal ideas ; from which we have 
reason to imagine that they have not the faculty of abstracting, or making 
general idea.s, since they have no use of words, or any other general signs. 
Sect. 11. Nor can it be imputed to their want of fit organs to frame articu- 
late sounds, that they have no use or knowledge of general words ; since 
many of them, we find, can fashion such sounds, and pronounce words dis- 
tinctly enough, but never with any such application. And, on the other 
side, men, who, through some defect in the organs want words, yet fail not 
to express their universal ideas by signs, which serve them instead of gen- 
eral words ; a faculty which we see beasts come short in. And, therefore, 
I think we may suppose, that it is in this that the species of brutes are dis- 
criminated from man; and it is that proper difference wherein they are 
wholly separated, and which at last widens to so vast a distance : for if they 
have any ideas at all, and are not bare machines (as some would have them) 
we cannot deny them to have some reason. It seems as evident to me, that 
they do some of them in certain instances reason, as that they have 
6ense : but it is only in particular ideas, just as they received them from 
their senses. They are the best of them tied up within those narrow 
bounds, and have not (as I think) the faculty to enlarge them by any kind 
of abstraction. 

Sect. 12. Idiots and madmen. — How far idiots are concerned in the 
want or weakness of any or all of the foregoing faculties, an exact observa- 
tion of their several ways of faltering would no doubt discover : for those 
who either perceive but dully, or retain the ideas that come into their minds 
but ill, who cannot readily excite or compound them, will have little matter 
to think on. Those who cannot distinguish, compare, and abstract, would 
hardly be able to understand and make use of language, or judge, or reason, 
to any tolerable degree ; but only a little and imperfectly about things pre- 
sent, and very familiar to their senses. And, indeed, any of the foremen- 
tioned faculties, if wanting, or out of order, produce suitable effects in men's 
understandings and knowledge. 

Sect. 13. In fine, the defect in naturals seems to proceed from want of 
quickness, activity, and motion in the intellectual faculties, whereby they 
are deprived of reason ; whereas madmen, on the other side, seem to suffer 
by the other extreme ; for they do not appear to me to have lost the faculty 
of reasoning; but having joined together some ideas very wrongly, they 
mistake them for truths, and they err as men do that argue right from wrong 
principles. For by the violence of their imaginations, having taken their 
fancies for realities, they make right deductions from them. Thus you 
shall find a distracted man fancying himself a king, with a right inference 
require suitable attendance, respect, and obedience; others, who have 
thought themselves made of glass, have used the caution necessary to pre- 
serve such brittle bodies. Hence it comes to pass that a man, who is very 
sober, and of a right understanding in all other things, may in one particu- 
lar be as frantic as any in Bedlam ; if either by any sudden very strong im- 
pression, or long fixing his fancy upon one sort of thoughts, incoherent 
ideas have been cemented together so powerfully, as to remain united. But 
there are degrees of madness, as of folly; the disorderly jumbling ideaes to- 
gether is in some more, some less. In short, herein seems to lie the difference 
between idiots and madmen, that madmen put wrong ideas together, and 



Ch. 11. DISCERNING. 109 

so make wrong propositions, but argue and reason right from them ; but 
idiots make very few or no propositions, and reason scarce at all. 

Sect. 14. Method. — These, I think, are the first faculties and operations 
of the mind, which it makes use of in understanding; and though they are 
exercised about all its ideas in general, yet the instances I have hitherto 
given have been chiefly in simple ideas : and I have subjoined the explica- 
tion of these faculties of the mind to that of simple ideas, before I come to 
what I have to say concerning complex ones, for these following reasons : 

First, Because several of these faculties being exercised at first princi- 
pally about simple ideas, we might, by following nature in its ordinary 
method, trace and discover them in their rise, progress, and gradual improve- 
ments. 

Secondly, Because observing the faculties of the mind, how they operate 
about simple ideas, which are usually, in most men's minds, much more 
clear, precise, and distinct than complex ones ; we may the better examine 
and learn how the mind abstracts, denominates, compares, and exercises 
its other operations about those which are complex, wherein we are much 
more liable to mistake. 

Thirdly, Because these very operations of the mind about ideas, received 
from sensations, are themselves, when reflected on, another set of ideas, 
derived from that other source* of our knowledge which I call reflection, and 
therefore fit to be considered in this place after the simple ideas of sensa- 
tion. Of compounding, comparing, abstracting, &c, I have but just spoken, 
having occasion to treat of them more at large in other places. 

Sect. 15. These are the beginnings of human knowledge. — And thus I 
have given a short, and, I think, true history of the first beginnings of hu- 
man knowledge, whence the mind has its first objects, and by what steps 
it makes its progress to the laying in and storing up those ideas, out of 
which is to be framed all the knowledge it is capable of; wherein I must 
appeal to experience and observation, whether 1 am in the right ; the best 
way to come to truth being to examine things as really they are, and not to 
conclude they are, as we fancy of ourselves, or have been taught by others 
to imagine. 

Sect. 16. Appeal to experience. — To deal truly, this is the only way 
that I can discover, whereby the ideas of things are brought into the under- 
standing: if other men have either innate ideas, or infused principles, they 
have reason to enjoy them; and if they are sure of it, it is impossible for 
others to deny them the privilege that they have above their neighbours. 
I can speak but of what I find in myself, and is agreeable to those notions, 
which, if we will examine the whole course of men in their several ages, 
countries, and educations, seem to depend on those foundations which I 
have laid, and to correspond with this method in all the parts and degrees 
thereof. 

Sect. 17. Dark room. — I pretend not to teach, but to inquire, and there- 
fore cannot but confess here again, that external and internal sensation are 
the only passages that I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These 
alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into 
this dark room : for methinks the understanding is not much unlike a closet 
wholly shut from light, with only some little opening left, to let in external 
visible resemblances, or ideas of things without : would the pictures coming 
into such a dark room/but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon 
occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in re- 
ference to all objects of sight and the ideas of them. 

These are my guesses concerning the means whereby the understand- 
ing comes to have and retain simple ideas ; and the modes of them, witli 
Borne other operations about them. I proceed now to examine some of 
these simple ideas, and their modes, a little more particularly. 



110 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 



CHAPTER XII. 

OF COMPLEX IDEAS. 

Sect. 1. Made by the mind out of simple ones. — We have hitherto con. 
sidered those ideas, in the reception whereof the mind is only passive 
which are those simple ones received from sensation and reflection before 
mentioned, whereof the mind cannot make one to itself, nor have any 
idea which does not wholly co'nsist of them. But as the mind is wholly 
passive in the reception of all its simple ideas, so it exerts several acta 
of its own, whereby, out of its simple ideas, as the materials and foun- 
dations of the rest, the others are framed. The acts of the mind, wherein 
it exerts its power over its simple ideas, are chiefly these three : 1. Com- 
bining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex 
ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or 
complex, together, and setting them by one another, so as to take a view 
of them at once, without uniting them into one ; by which way it gets all 
its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas 
that accompany them in their real existence ; this is called abstraction : 
and thus all its general ideas are made. This shows man's power, and its 
way of operation, to be much-what the same in the material , and intellec- 
tual world : for the materials in both being such as he has no power over, 
either to make or destroy, all that man can do is either to unite them together, 
or to set them by one another, or wholly separate them. I shall here begin 
with the first of these, in the consideration of complex ideas, and come to 
the other two in their due places. As simple ideas are observed to exist 
in several combinations united together, so the mind has a power to con- 
sider several of them united together as one idea ; and that not only as they 
are united in external objects, but as itself has joined them. Ideas thus 
made up of several simple ones put together, I call complex ; such as are 
beauty, gratitude, a man, an army, the universe ; which, though complica- 
ted of various simple ideas, or complex ideas made up of simple ones, yet 
are, when the mind pleases, considered each by itself as one entire thing, 
and signified by one name. 

Sect. 2. Made voluntarily. — In this faculty of repeating and joining 
together its ideas, the mind has great power in varying and multiplying 
the objects of its thoughts infinitely beyond what sensation or reflection 
furnished it with ; but all this still confined to those simple ideas which it 
received from those two sources, and which are the ultimate materials of 
all its compositions : for simple ideas are all from things themselves, and 
of these the mind can have no more nor other than what are suggested to it. 
It can have no other ideas of sensible qualities than what come from with- 
out by the senses, nor any ideas of other kind of operations of a thinking 
substance than what it finds in itself; but when it has once got these simple 
ideas, it is not confined barely to observation, and what offers itself from 
without : it can, by its own power, put together those ideas it has, and 
make new complex ones, which it never received so united. 

Sect 3. Are either modes, substances, or relations. — Complex ideas, 
however compounded and decompounded, though their number be infinite, 
and the variety endless, wherewith they fill and entertain the thoughts of 
men ; yet, I think, they may be all reduced under these three heads . 1. 
Modes. 2. Substances. 3. Relations. 

Sect. 4. Modes. — First, Modes I call such complex ideas, which, how- 
ever compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by 



Ch. 12. OF COMPLEX IDEAS. 1U 

themselves, but are considered as dependencies on, or affections of sub- 
stances : such as are ideas signified by the words triangle, gratitude, mur- 
der, &c. And if in this I use the word mode in somewhat a different sense 
from its ordinary signification, I beg pardon : it being unavoidable in dis- 
courses, differing from the ordinary received notions, either to make new 
words, or to use old words in somewhat a new signification : the latter 
whereof, in our present case, is perhaps the more tolerable of the two. 

Sect. 5. Simple and mixed modes. — Of these modes, there are two sorts 
which deserve distinct consideration. First, there are some which are 
only variations, or different combinations of the same simple idea, without 
the mixture of any other, as a dozen or score : which are nothing but the 
ideas of so many distinct units added together ; and these I call simple modes, 
as being contained within the bounds of one simple idea. 

Secondly, There are others compounded of simple ideas of several kinds, 
put together to make one complex one ; v. g. beauty, consisting of a cer- 
tain composition of colour and figure, causing delight in the beholder ; 
theft, which being the concealed change of the possession of any thing, 
without the consent of the proprietor, contains, as is visible, a combination 
of several ideas of several kinds: and these I call mixed modes. 

Sect. 6. Substances, single or collective. — Secondly, the ideas of sub- 
stances are such combinations of simple ideas as are taken to represent 
distinct particular things subsisting by themselves ; in which the supposed 
or confused idea of substance, such as it is, is always the first and chief. 
Thus, if to substance be joined the simple idea of a certain dull whitish 
colour, with certain degrees of weight, hardness, ductility, and fusibility, 
we have the idea of lead, and a combination of the ideas of a certain sort 
of figure, with the powers of motion. Thought and reasoning, joined to 
substance, make the ordinary idea of a man. Now of substances also 
there are two sorts of ideas ; one of single substances, as they exist 
separately, as of a man, or a sheep ; the other of several of those put to- 
gether, as an army of men, or flock of sheep ; which collective ideas of 
several substances thus put together, are as much each of them one single 
idea, as that of a man, or a unit. 

Sect. 7. Relation. — Thirdly, the last sort of complex ideas is that we 
call relation, which consists in the consideration and comparing one idea 
with another. Of these several kinds we shall treat in their order. 

Sect. 8. The abstrusest ideas from the two sources. — If we trace the 
progress of our minds, and with attention observe how it repeats, adds to- 
gether, and unites its simple ideas received from sensation or reflection, it 
will lead us farther than at first perhaps we should have imagined. And I 
believe we shall find, if we warily observe the originals of our notions, that 
even the most abstruse ideas, how remote soever they may seem from sense, 
or from any operations of our own minds, are yet only such as the under- 
standing frames to itself by repeating and joining together ideas, that it had 
either from objects of sense, or from its own operations about them: so that 
even those large and abstract ideas are derived from sensation or reflection, 
being no other than what the mind, by the ordinary use of its own faculties, 
employed about ideas received from objects of sense, or from the opera- 
tions it observes in itself about them, may and does attain unto. This I 
shall endeavour to show in the ideas we have of space, time, and infinity, 
and some few others, that seem the most remote from those originals. 



112 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

OF SIMPLE MODES ; AND FIRST, OF THE SIMPLE MODES OF 

SPACE. 

Sect. 1. Simple modes. — Though in the foregoing part I have often men- 
tioned simple ideas, which are truly the materials of all our knowledge ; yet 
having treated of them there rather in the way that they come into the 
mind, than as distinguished from others more compounded, it will not 
be perhaps amiss to take a view of some of them again under this con- 
sideration, and examine those different modifications of the same idea, 
which the mind either finds in things existing, or is able to make within 
itself, without the help of any extrinsical object, or any foreign suggestion. 

Those modifications of any one simple idea (which, as has been said, I 
call simple modes) are as perfectly different and distinct ideas in the mind 
as those of the greatest distance or contrariety. For the idea of two is as 
distinct from that of one as blueness from heat, or either of them from any 
number : and yet it is made up only of that simple idea of a unit repeated ; 
and repetitions of this kind joined together, make those distinct simple 
modes, of a dozen, a gross, a million. 

Sect. 2. Idea of space. — I shall begin with the simple idea of space. 
I have showed above, chap. 4, that we get the idea of space both by our 
sight and touch ; which I think is so evident, that it would be as needless to 
go to prove that men perceive, by their sight, a distance between bodies of 
different colours, or between the parts of the same body, as that they see 
colours themselves ; nor is it less obvious that they can do so in the dark by 
feeling and touch. 

Sect. 3. Space and extension. — This space, considered barely in length 
between any two beings, without considering any thing else between them, 
is called distance ; if considered in length, breadth, and thickness, I think 
it may be called capacity. The term extension is usually applied to it in 
what manner soever considered. 

Sect. 4. Immensity. — Each different distance is a different modification of 
space : and each idea of any different distance or space is a simple mode 
of this idea. Men, for the use and by the custom of measuring, settle in 
their minds the ideas of certain stated lengths, such as are an inch, foot, 
yard, fathom, mile, diameter of the earth, &c. which are so many distinct 
ideas made up only of space. When any such stated lengths or measures 
of space are made familiar to men's thoughts, they can in their minds re- 
peat them as often as they will, without mixing or joining to them the idea 
of body, or any thing else ; and frame to themselves the ideas of long, 
square, or cubic, feet, yards, or fathoms, here among the bodies of the 
universe, or else beyond the utmost bounds of all bodies ; and by adding 
these still one to another, enlarge their ideas of space as much as they 
please. The power of repeating or doubling any idea we have of any dis- 
tance, and adding it to the former as often as we will, without being ever 
able to come to any stop or stint, let us enlarge it as much as we will, is 
that which gives us the idea of immensity. 

Sect. 5. Figure. — There is another modification of this idea, which is 
nothing but the relation which the parts of the termination of extension oi 
circumscribed space have among themselves. This the touch discovers in 
sensible bodies, whose extremities come within our reach ; and the eyt 
takes both from bodies and colours, whose boundaries are within its view, 
where observing how the extremities tem^^ate either in straight lines, 
which meet at discernible angles, or in crooked lines, wherein no angles 



Ch. 13. SIMPLE MODES OF SPACE. 113 

can be perceived, by considering these as they relate to one another, in all 
parts of the extremities of any body or space, it has that idea we call figure, 
which affords to the mind infinite variety. For besides the vast number 
of different figures that do really exist in the coherent masses of matter, 
the stock that the mind has in its power, by varying the idea of space, and 
thereby making still new compositions, by repeating its own ideas, and 
joining them as it pleases, is perfectly inexhaustible ; and so it can multi- 
ply figures in infinitum. 

Skct. 6. Figure. — For the mind having a power to repeat the idea of 
any length directly stretched out, and join it to another in the same direc- 
tion, which is to double the length of that straight line, or else join another 
with what inclination it thinks fit, and so make what sort of angle it pleases ; 
and being able also to shorten any line it imagines, by taking from it one- 
half or one-fourth or what part it pleases, without being able to come to 
an end of any such divisions, it can make an angle of any bigness ; so also 
the lines that are its sides, of what length it pleases, with joining again to 
other lines of different lengths, and at different angles, till it has wholly 
inclosed any space, it is evident that it can multiply figures, both in their 
shape and capacity, in infinitum ; all which are but so many different 
simple modes of space. 

The same that it can do with straight lines, it can also do with crooked, 
or crooked and straight together ; and the same it can do in lines it can 
also in superficies : by which we may be led into farther thoughts of the 
endless variety of figures, that the mind has a power to make, and thereby 
to multiply the simple modes of space. 

Sect. 7. Place. — Another idea coming under this head, and belonging to 
this tribe, is that we call place. As in simple space we consider the re- 
lation of distance between any two bodies or points ; so in our idea of 
place we consider the relation of distance betwixt any thing and any two 
or more points, which are considered as keeping the same distance one 
with another, and so considered as at rest : for when we find any thing at 
the same distance now which it was yesterday, from any two or more 
points, which have not since changed their distance one with another, and 
with which we then compared it, we say it hath kept the same place : but 
if it hath sensibly altered its distance with either of those points, we say 
it hath changed its place : though vulgarly speaking, in the common notion 
of place, we do not always exactly observe the distance from these precise 
points, but from larger portions of sensible objects, to which we consider 
the thing placed to bear relation, and its distance from which we have 
some reason to observe. 

Sect. 8. Thus a company of chess-men standing on the same squares 
of the chess-board where we left them, we say they are all in the same 
place, or unmoved ; though perhaps the chess-board hath been in the mean 
time carried out of one room into another ; because we compared them 
only to the parts of the chess-board which keep the same distance one with 
another. The chess-board, we also say, is in the same place it was, if it 
remain in the same part of the cabin, though perhaps the ship which it is 
in sails all the while : and the ship is said to be in the same place, supposing 
it kept the same distance with the parts of the neighbouring land, though 
perhaps the earth hath turned round : and so both chess-men, and board, 
and ship, have every one changed place, in respect of remoter bodies, which 
have kept the same distance one with another. But yet the distance from 
certain parts of the board being that which determines the place of the 
chess-men : and the distance from the fixed parts of the cabin (with which 
we made the comparison) being that which determined the place of the 
chess-board ; and the fixed parts of the earth that by which we determined 
the place of the ship ; these things may be said to be in the same place in 
those respects : though their distance from some other things, which in this 



114 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

matter we did not consider, being varied, they have undoubtedly changed 
place in that respect: and we ourselves shall think so when we have occa- 
sion to compare them with those other. 

Sect. 9. But this modification of distance we call place, being made by 
men for their common use, that by it they might be able to design the par- 
ticular position of things, where they had occasion for such designation ; 
men consider and determine of this place by reference to those adjacent 
things which best served to their present purpose, without considering 
other things, which to answer another purpose would better determine the 
place of the same thing. Thus, in the chess-board, the use of the designa- 
tion of the place of each chess-man being determined only within that 
chequered piece of wood, it would cross that purpose to measure it by any 
thing else : but when these very chess-men are put up in a bag, if any one 
should ask where the black king is, it would be proper to determine the 
place by the parts of the room it was in, and not by the chess-board ; there 
being another use of designing the place it is now in, than when in play it 
was on the chess-board, and so must be determined by other bodies. So 
if any one should ask, in what place are the verses which report the story 
of Nisus and Euryalus, it would be very improper to determine this place 
by saying, they were in such a part of the earth, or in Bodley's library : 
but the right designation of the place would be by the parts of Virgil's 
works ; and the proper answer would be, that these verses were about the 
middle of the ninth book of his iEneid ; and that they have been always 
constantly in the same place ever since Virgil was printed ; which is true, 
though the book itself hath moved a thousand times ; the use of the idea 
of place here being to know in what part of the book that story is, that so 
upon occasion we may know where to find it, and have recourse to it for 
use. 

Sect. 10. Place. — That our idea of place is nothing else but such a rela- 
tive position of any thing, as I have' before mentioned, I think is plain, and 
will be easily admitted, when we consider that we can have no idea of the 
place of the universe, though we can of all the parts of it ; because beyond 
that we have not the idea of any fixed, distinct, particular beings, in reference 
to which we can imagine it to have any relation of distance ; but all 
beyond it is one uniform space or expansion, wherein the mind finds no 
variety, no marks. For to say that the world is somewhere, means no 
more than that it does exist : this, though a phrase borrowed from place, 
signifying only its existence, not location ; and when one can find out and 
frame in his mind, clearly and distinctly, the place of the universe, he will 
be able to tell us whether it moves or stands still in the undistinguishable 
inane of infinite space: though it be true that the word place has some- 
times a more confused sense, and stands for that space which any body 
takes up ; and so the universe is in a place. The idea therefore of place 
we have by the same means that we get the idea of space (whereof this is 
but a particular limited consideration,) viz. by our sight and touch ; by 
either of which we receive into our minds the ideas of extension or distance. 

Sect. 11. Extension and body not the same. — There are some that 
would persuade us that body and extension are the same thing: who 
either change the signification of words, which I would not suspect them 
of, they having so severely condemned the philosophy of others, because 
it hath been too much placed in the uncertain meaning or deceitful ob- 
scurity of doubtful or insignificant terms. If therefore they mean by body 
and extension the same that other people do, viz. by body, something that 
is solid and extended, whose parts are separable and moveable different 
ways ; and by extension only the space that lies between the extremities 
of those solid coherent parts, and which is possessed by them, they con- 
found very different ideas one with another. For I appeal to every man's 
own thoughts whether the idea of space be not as distinct from that of 



Gh. 13. SIMPLE MODES OF SPACE. 115 

solidity as it is from the idea of scarlet colour ? It is true, solidity cannot exist 
without extension, neither can scarlet colour exist without extension ; but 
this hinders not but that they are distinct ideas. Many ideas require others 
as necessary to their existence or conception, which yet are very distinct 
ideas. Motion can neither be, nor be conceived, without space ; and yet 
motion is not space, nor space motion : space can exist without it, and they 
are very distinct ideas ; and so, I think, are those of space and solidity. 
Solidity is so inseparable an idea from body, that upon that depends its fill- 
ing of space, its contact, impulse, and communication of motion upon 
impulse. And if it be a reason to prove that spirit is different from 
body, because thinking includes not the idea of extension in it, the same 
reason will be as valid, I suppose, to prove that space is not body, because 
it includes not the idea of solidity in it : space and solidity being as dis- 
tinct ideas as thinking and extension, and as wholly separable in the mind 
one from another. Body, then, and extension, it is evident, are two dis- 
tinct ideas. For, 

Sect. 12. First, Extension includes no solidity, nor resistance to the 
motion of body, as body does. 

Sect. 13. Secondly, The parts of pure space are inseparable one from 
the other ; so that the continuity cannot be separated, neither really nor 
mentally. For I demand of any one to remove any part of it from another 
with which it is continued, even so much as in thought. To divide and 
separate actually, is, as I think, by removing the parts one from another, to 
make two superficies, where before there was a continuity ; and to divide 
mentally, is to make in the mind two superficies, where before there was 
a continuity, and consider them as removed one from the other ; which can 
only be done in things considered by the mind as capable of being sepa- 
rated, and by separation, of acquiring new distinct superficies, which they 
then have not, but are capable of; but neither of these ways of separation, 
whether real or mental, is, as I think, compatible to pure space. 

It is true, a man may consider so much of such a space as is answerable 
or commensurate to a foot, without considering the rest ; which is in- 
deed a partial consideration, but not so much as mental separation or 
division ; since a man can no more mentally divide, without considering 
two superficies separate one from the other, than he can actually divide 
without making two superficies disjoined one from the other : but a partial 
consideration is not separating. A man may consider light in the sun, 
without its heat ; or mobility in body, without its extension, without think- 
ing of their separation. One is only a partial consideration, terminating in 
one alone ; and the other is a consideration of both, as existing separately. 

Sect. 14. Thirdly, The parts of pure space are immovable, which fol- 
lows from their inseparability ; motion being nothing but change of distance 
between any two things ; but this cannot be between parts that are insepa- 
rable, which therefore must needs be at perpetual rest one among another. 

Thus the determined idea of simple space distinguishes it plainly and 
sufficiently from body; since its parts are inseparable, immovable, and 
without resistance to the motion of body. 

Sect. 15. The definition of extension explains it not. — If any one ask 
me what this space I speak of is 7 I will tell him, when he tells me what 
his extension is. For to say, as is usually done, that extension is to have 
partes extra partes, is to say only that extension is extension : for what am 
I the better informed in the nature of extension when I am told, that ex- 
tension is to have parts that are extended exterior to parts that are exten- 
ded, i. e. extension consists of extended parts 1 As if one asking what a 
fibre was 1 I should answer him, that it was a thing made up of several 
fibres : would he thereby be enabled to understand what a fibre was better 
than he did before 1 Or rather, would he not have reason to think that my 
design was to make sport with him, rather than seriously to instruct him i 



116 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

Sect. 16. Division of beings into bodies and spirits proves not space and 
body the same. — Those who contend that space and body are the same, 
bring this dilemma, either this space is something or nothing ; if nothing 
be between two bodies, they must necessarily touch ; if it be allowed to be 
something, they ask whether it be body or spirit ) To which I answer by 
another question, who told them that there was or could be nothing but 
solid beings which could not think, and thinking beings, that were not ex- 
tended ? which is all they mean by the terms body and spirit. 

Sect. 17. Substance which we know not, no proof against space with- 
out body. — If it be demanded (as usually it is) whether this space, void of 
body, be substance or accident, I shall readily answer, I know not, nor shall 
be ashamed to own my ignorance, till they that ask show me a clear dis- 
tinct idea of substance. 

Sect. 18. I endeavour, as much as I can, to deliver myself from those 
fallacies which we are apt to put upon ourselves by taking words for things. 
It helps not our ignorance to feign a knowledge where we have none, by 
making a noise with sounds, without clear and distinct significations. 
Names made at pleasure neither alter the nature of things, nor make us 
understand them, but as they are signs of, and stand for determined ideas : 
and I desire those who lay so much stress on the sound of these two sylla- 
bles, substance, to consider whether applying it, as they do, to the infinite, 
incomprehensible God, to finite spirit, and to body, it be in the same sense ; 
and whether it stands for the same idea, when each of those three so dif- 
ferent beings are called substances'? If so, whether it will thence follow 
that God, spirits, and body, agreeing in the same common nature of sub- 
stance, differ not any otherwise than in a bare different modification of that 
substance ; as a tree and a pebble, being in the same sense body, and agree- 
ing in the common nature of body, differ only in the bare modification of that 
common matter ; which will be a very harsh doctrine. If they say that 
they apply it to God, finite spirits, and matter, in three different significa- 
tions ; and that it stands for one idea, when God is said to be a substance ; 
for another, when the soul is called subtance ; and for a third, when a body 
is called so : if the name substance stands for three several distinct ideas, 
they would do well to make known those distinct ideas, or at least to give 
three distinct names to them, to prevent, in so important a notion, the con- 
fusion and errors that will naturally follow from the promiscuous use of so 
doubtful a term ; which is so far from being suspected to have three distinct, 
that in ordinary use it has scarce one clear distinct signification ; and if they 
can thus make three distinct ideas of substance, what hinders why another 
may not make a fourth? 

Sect. 19. Substance and accidents, of little use in philosophy, — They 
who first ran into the notion of accidents, as a sort of real beings that needed 
something to inhere in, were forced to find out the word substance to sup- 
port them. Had the poor Indian philosopher (who imagined that the earth 
also wanted something to bear it up) but thought of this word, substance, 
he needed not to have been at the trouble to find an elephant to support it, 
and a tortoise to support his elephant : the word substance would have done 
it effectually. And he that inquired might have taken it for as good an 
answer from an Indian philosopher, that substance, without knowing what 
it is, is that which supports the earth, as we take it for a sufficient answer, and 
good doctrine, from our European philosophers, that substance, without 
knowing what it is, is that which supports accidents. So that of substance 
we have no idea of what it is, but only a confused obscure one of what it 
does. 

Sect. 20. Whatever a learned man may do here, an intelligent American, 
who inquired into the nature of things, would scarce take it for a satisfac- 
tory account, if, desiring to learn our architecture, he should be told that 
a pillar was a thing supported by a basis, and a basis something that sup- 



Ch. 13. SIMPLE MODES OF SPACE. 117 

ported a pillar. Would he not think himself mocked, instead of taught, 
with such an account as this ? And a stranger to them would be very lib- 
erally instructed in the nature of books, and the things they contained, if 
he should be told, that all learned books consisted of paper and letters, and that 
letters were things inhering in paper, and paper a thing that held forth letters ; 
a notable way of having clear ideas of letters and paper ! But were the Latin 
words inhcerentia and substantia put into the plain English ones that an- 
swer them, and were called sticking on and underpropping, they would bet- 
ter discover to us the very great clearness there is in the doctrine of sub- 
stance and accidents, and show of what use they are in deciding of questions 
in philosophy. 

Sect. 21. A vacuum beyond the utmost bounds of body. — But to return 
to our idea of space. If body be not supposed infinite, which I think no 
one will affirm, I would ask, whether, if God placed a man at the extremi- 
ty of corporeal beings, he could not stretch his hand beyond his body] If 
he could, then he would put his arm where there was before space with- 
out body, and if there he spread his fingers, there would still be space be- 
tween them without body. If he could not stretch out his hand, it must be 
because of some external hindrance ; (for we suppose him alive, with such 
a power of moving the parts of his body that he hath now, which is not in 
itself impossible, if God so pleased to have it ; or at least it is not impossi-' 
ble for God so to move him :) and then I ask, whether tl at which hinders 
his hand from moving outwards be substance or accident, something or 
nothing ] And when they have resolved that, they will be able to resolve 
themselves what that is, which is or may be between two bodies at a dis- 
tance, that is not body, and has no solidity. In the mean time, the argu- 
ment is at least as good, that where nothing hinders (as beyond the utmost 
bounds of all bodies) a body put in motion may move on : as where there is 
nothing between, there two bodies must necessarily touch : for pure space 
between is sufficient to take away the necessity of mutual contact ; but bare 
space in the way is not sufficient to stop motion. The truth is, these men 
must either own that they think body infinite, though they are loath to speak 
it out, or else affirm that space is not body. For I would fain meet with 
that thinking man, that can in his thoughts set any bounds to space more 
than he can to duration, or by thinking hope to arrive at the end of either: 
and, therefore, if his idea of eternity be infinite, so is his idea of immensity : 
they are both finite or infinite alike. 

Sect. 22. The power of annihilation proves a vacuum. — Farther, those 
who assert the impossibility of space existing without matter, must not on- 
ly make body infinite, but must also deny a power in God to annihilate any 
part of matter. No one, I suppose, will deny that God can put an end to 
all motion that is in matter, and fix all the bodies of the universe in a per- 
fect quiet and rest, and continue them so long as he pleases. Whoever 
then will allow that God can, during such a general rest, annihilate either 
this book, or the body of him that reads it, must necessarily admit the pos- 
sibility of a vacuum ; for it is evident that the space that was filled by the 
parts of the annihilated body will still remain, and be a space without body : 
for the circumambient bodies being in perfect rest, are a wall of adamant, 
and in that state make it a perfect impossibility for any other body to get 
into that space. And indeed the necessary motion of one particle of mat- 
ter into the place from whence another particle of matter is removed, is 
but a consequence from the supposition of plentitude ; which will therefore 
need some better proof than a supposed matter of fact, which experiment 
can never make out : our own clear and distinct ideas plainly satisfying us 
that there is no necessary connexion between space and solidity, since we 
can conceive the one without the other. And those who dispute for or against 
a vacuum, do thereby confess they have distinct ideas of vacuum and plenum, 
i.e. that they have an idea of extension void of solidity, though they deny its 



jl18 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

existence, or else they dispute about nothing at all. For they who so 
much alter the signification of words as to call extension body, and conse- 
quently make the whole essence of body to be nothing but pure extension 
without solidity, must talk absurdly whenever they speak of vacuum, since 
it is impossible for extension to be without extension : for vacuum, whether 
we affirm or deny its existence, signifies space without body, whose very ex- 
istence no one can deny to be possible, who will not make matter infinite, and 
take from God a power to annihilate any particle of it. 

Sect. 23. Motion proves a vacuum. — But not to go so far as beyond the 
utmost bounds of body in the universe, nor appeal to God's omnipotency 
to find a vacuum, the motion of bodies that are in our view and neighbour- 
hood seems to me plainly to evince it. For I desire any one so to divide 
a solid body, of any dimension he pleases, as to make it possible for the 
solid parts to move up and down freely every way within the bounds of 
that superficies, if there be not left in it a void space as big as the least 
part into which he has divided the said solid body. And if where the 
least particle of the body divided is as big as a mustard-seed, a void space 
equal to the bulk of a mustard-seed be 'requisite to make room for the free 
motion of the parts of the divided body within the bounds of its superficies, 
where the particles, of matter are 100,000,000 less than a mustard-seed, 
there must also be a space void of solid matter as big as 100,000,000 part 
of a mustard-seed ; for if it hold good in one it will hold in the other, and so on 
in infinitum. And let this void space be as little as it will, it destroys the 
hypothesis of plentitude : for if there can be a space void of body equal to 
the smallest separate particle of matter now existing in nature, it is still 
space without body, and makes as great a difference between space and 
body, as if it were juiya. ^eta-fxa., a distance as wide as any in nature. 
And therefore if we suppose not the void space necessary to motion equal 
to the least parcel of the divided solid matter, but to 1-10 or 1-1000 of it, the 
same consequence will always follow of space without matter. 

Sect. 24. The ideas of space and body distinct. — But the question being 
here, " whether the idea of space or extension be the same with the idea 
ofbody,"itis not necessary to prove the real existence of a vacuum, but 
the idea of it ; which it is plain men have, when they inquire and dispute 
whether there be a vacuum or no : for if they had not the idea of space 
without body, they could not make a question about its existence ; and if 
their idea of body did not include in it something more than the bare idea 
of space, they could have no doubt about the plentitude of the word ; and 
it would be as absurd to demand whether there were space without body, 
as whether there were space without space, or body without body, since 
these were but different names of the same idea. 

Sect. 25. Extension being inseparable from body, proves it not the same. 
— It is true, that the idea of extension joins itself so inseparably with all 
visible and most tangible qualities, that it suffers us to see no one, or 
feel very few external objects, without taking in impressions of extension 
too. This readiness of extension to make itself be taken notice of so con- 
stantly with other ideas, has been the occasion, I guess, that some have 
made the whole essence of body to consist in extension ; which is not 
much to be wondered at, since some have had their minds, by their eyes 
and touch (the busiest of all our senses,) so filled with the idea of exten- 
sion, and as it were wholly possessed with it, that they allowed no exist- 
ence to any thing that had not extension. I shall not now argue with 
those men who take the measure and possibility of all being only from their 
narrow and gross imaginations ; but having here to do only with those who 
conclude the essence of body to be extension, because they say they cannot im- 
agine any sensible quality of any body without extension, I shall desire them 
to consider, that had they reflected on their ideas of tastes and smells as 
much as on those of sight and touch ; nay, had they examined their ideas 



Ch. 13, SIMPLE MODES OF SPACE. 119 

of hunger and thirst, and several other pains, they would have found that 
they included in them no idea of extension at all; which is but an affec- 
tion of body, as well as the rest, discoverable by our senses, which are 
scarce acute enough to look into the pure essences of things. 

Sect. 26. If those ideas which are constantly joined to all others must 
therefore be concluded to be the essence of those things which have con- 
stantly those ideas joined to them, and are inseparable from them, then 
unity is, without doubt, the essence of every thing: for there is not any ob- 
ject of sensation or reflection which does not carry with it the idea of one ; 
but the weakness of this kind of argument we have already shown suffi- 
ciently. 

Sect. 27. Ideas of space and solidity distinct. — To conclude, whatever 
men shall think concerning the existence of a vacuum, this is plain to me, 
that we have as clear an idea of space distinct from solidity, as we have 
of solidity distinct from motion, or motion from space. We have not any 
two more distinct ideas, and we can as easily conceive space without 
solidity, as we can conceive body or space without motion, though it be 
never so certain that neither body nor motion can exist without space. But 
whether any one will take space to be only a relation resulting from the 
existence of other beings at a distance, or whether they will think the words 
of the most knowing king Solomon, "The heaven, and the heaven of 
heavens cannot contain thee," or those more emphatical ones of the in- 
spired philosopher St Paul, " In him we live, move, and have our being," 
are to be understood in a literal sense, I leave every one to consider : only 
our idea of space is, I think, such as I have mentioned, and distinct from 
that of body. For whether we consider in matter itself the distance of 
its coherent solid parts, and call it, in respect of those solid parts, exten- 
sion ; or whether, considering it as lying between the extremities of any 
body in its several dimensions, we call it length, breadth, and thickness ; 
or else, considering it as lying between any two bodies or positive beings, 
without any consideration whether there be any matter or no between, we 
call it distance : however named or considered, it is always the same uniform 
simple idea of space, taken from objects about which our senses have been 
conversant ; whereof having settled ideas in our minds, we can revive, re- 
peat, and add them one to another as often as we will, and consider the 
space or distance so imagined either as filled with solid parts, so that 
another body cannot come there without displacing and thrusting out the 
body that was there before, or else as void of solidity, so that a body of 
equal dimensions to that empty or pure space may be placed in it without 
the removing or expulsion of any thing that was there. But, to avoid con- 
fusion in discourses concerning this matter, it were possibly to be wished 
that the name extension were applied only to matter, or the distance of the ex- 
tremities of particular bodies; and the term expansion to space in general, 
with or without solid matter possessing it, so as to say space is expanded, 
and body extended. But in this every one has liberty : I propose it only 
for the more clear and distinct way of speaking. 

Sect. 28 Men differ little in clear simple ideas. — The knowing precise- 
ly what our words stand for, would, I imagine, in this, as well as a great 
many other cases, quickly end the dispute : for I am apt to think that men, 
when they come to examine them, find their simple ideas all generally to 
agree, though in discourse with one another they perhaps confound one 
another with different names. I imagine that men who abstract their thoughts, 
and do well examine the ideas of their own minds, cannot much differ in 
thinking, however they may perplex themselves with words, according to 
the way of speaking of the several schools or sects they have been bred up 
in : though among unthinking men, who examine not scrupulously and care- 
fully their own ideas, and strip them not from the marks men use for them, 
but confound them with words, there must be endless dispute, wrangling, 



120 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

and jargon; especially if they be learned bookish men, devoted to some 
sect, and accustomed to the language of it, and have learned to talk after 
others. But if it should happen that any two thinking men should really 
have different ideas, I do not see how they could discourse or argue one with 
another. Here I must not be mistaken, to think that every floating imagi- 
nation in men's brains is presently of that sort of ideas I speak of. It is 
not easy for the mind to put off those confused notions and prejudices it has 
.mbibed from custom, inadvertency, and common conversation : it requires 
pains and assiduity to examine its ideas, till it resolves them into those 
clear and distinct simple ones, out of which they are compounded ; and to see 
which, among its simples ones, have or have not a necessary connexion 
and dependence one upon another. Till a man doth this in the primary 
and original notion of things, he builds upon floating and uncertain princi- 
ples, and will often find himself at a loss. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

OF DURATION, AND ITS SIMPLE MODES. 

Sect. 1. Duration is fleeting extension. — There is another sort of dis- 
tance or length, the idea whereof we get not from the permanent parts of 
space, but from the fleeting and perpetually perishing parts of succession. 
This we call duration, the simple modes whereof are any different lengths 
of it whereof we have distinct ideas, as hours, days, years, &c time and 
eternity. 

Sect. 2. Its idea from reflection on the train of our ideas. — The 
answer of a great man to one who asked what time was " Si non rogas 
intelligo^ (which amounts to this, the more I set myself to think of it, 
the less I understand it) might perhaps persuade one that time, which re- 
veals all other things, is itself not to be discovered. Duration, time, and 
eternity, are not without reason thought to have something very abstruse 
in their nature. But however remote these may seem from our compre- 
hension, yet if we trace them right to their originals, I doubt not but one of 
those sources of all our knowledge, viz. sensation and reflection, will be 
able to furnish us with these ideas as clear and distinct as many others which 
are thought much less obscure ; and we shall find that the idea of eternity 
itself is derived from the same common original with the rest of our ideas. 

Sect. 3. To understand time and eternity aright, we ought with atten- 
tion to consider what idea it is we have of duration, and how we came by 
it. It is evident to any one, who will but observe what passes in his 
own mind, that there is a train of ideas which constantly succeed one 
another in his understanding as long as he is awake. Reflection on these 
appearances of several ideas, one after another, in our minds, is that which 
furnishes us with the idea of succession ; and the distance between any 
parts of that succession, or between the appearance of any two ideas in our 
minds, is that we call duration : for whilst we are thinking, or whilst we 
receive successively several ideas in our minds, we know that we do exist ; 
and so we call the existence, or the continuation of the existence of our- 
selves, or any thing else, commensurate to the succession of any ideas in 
our minds, the duration of ourselves, or any other thing co-existent with 
our thinking. 

Sect. 4. That we have our notion of succession and duration from this 
original, viz. from reflection on the train of ideas which we find to appear 
one after another in our own minds, seems plain to me, in that we ha^e nc 
perception of duration, but by considering the train of ideas that take their 



Ch. 14, DURATION, AND ITS SIMPLE MODES. 121 

turns in our understandings. When that succession of ideas ceases, out 
perception of duration ceases with it ; which every one clearly experiments 
in himself, whilst he sleeps soundly, whether an hour or a day, a month 
or a year; of which duration of things, while he sleeps or thinks not, he 
has no perception at all, but it is quite lost to him ; and the moment where- 
in he leaves off to think, till the moment he begins to think again, seems to 
him to have no distance. And so I doubt not it would be to a waking man, 
if it were possible for him to keep only one idea in his mind, without va- 
riation and the succession of others. And we see that one who fixes his 
thoughts very intently on one thing, so as to take but little notice of the 
succession of ideas that pass in his mind, whilst he is taken up with that 
earnest contemplation, lets slip out of his account a good part of that dura- 
tion, and thinks that time shorter than it is. But if sleep commonly unites 
the distant parts of duration, it is because during that time we have no suc- 
cession of ideas in our minds : for if a man, during his sleep, dreams, and vari- 
ety of ideas make themselves perceptible in his mind one after another, he hath 
then, during such dreaming, a sense of duration, and the length of it : by 
which it is to me very clear, that men derive their ideas of duration from 
their reflections on the train of the ideas they observe to succeed one ano- 
ther in their own understandings ; without which observation they can 
have no notion of duration, whatever may happen in the world. 

Sect. 5. The idea of duration applicable to things whilst we sleep. — 
Indeed a man having, from reflecting on the succession and number of his 
own thoughts, got the notion or idea of duration, he can apply that notion 
to things which exist while he does not think ; as he that has got the idea 
cf extension from bodies by his sight or touch, can apply it to distances 
where no body is seen or felt. And therefore, though a man has no percep- 
tion of the length of duration, which passed whilst he slept or thought not, 
yet having observed the revolution of days and nights, and found the length 
of their duration to be in appearance regular and-constant, he can, upon the 
supposition that that revolution has proceeded after the same manner whilst 
he was asleep, or thought not as it used to do at other times : he can, 1 say, 
imagine and make allowance for the length of duration whilst lie slept. 
But if Adam and Eve (when they were alone in the world,) instead of their 
ordinary night's sleep, had passed the whole twenty-four hours in one con- 
tinued sleep, the duration of that twenty-four hours had been irrecoverably 
lost to them, and been for ever left out of their account of time. 

Sect. 6. The idea of succession not from motion. — Thus, by reflecting 
on the appearing of various ideas one after another in our understandings, 
we get the notion of succession ; which, if any one would think we did 
rather get from our observation of motion by our senses, he will perhaps 
be of my mind when he considers, that even motion produces in his mind 
an idea of succession no otherwise than as it produces there a continued 
train of distinguishable ideas. For a man looking upon a body really 
moving, perceives yet no motion at all, unless that motion produces a con- 
stant train of successive ideas : v. g. a man becalmed at sea, out of 
sight of land, in a fair day, may look on the sun, or sea, or ship, a whole 
hour together, and perceive no motion at all in either ; though it be certain 
that two, and perhaps all of them, have moved during that time a great 
way. But as soon as he perceives either of them to have changed dis- 
tance with some other body, as soon as this motion produces any new idea 
in him, then he perceives that there has been motion. But wherever a 
man is, with all things at rest about him, without perceiving any motion at all ; 
if during this hour of quiet he has been thinking, he will perceive the vari- 
ous ideas of his own thoughts in his own mind, appearing one after another, 
and thereby observe and find succession where he could observe no motion. 

Sect. 7. And this, I think, is the reason why motions very slow, though 
they are constant, are not perceived by us ; because, in their remove from 
Q 



122 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

one sensible part toward another, their change of distance is so slow, that 
it causes no new ideas in us, but a good while one after another : and so 
not causing a constant train of new ideas to follow one another immediately 
in our minds, we have no perception of motion ; which consisting in a con- 
stant succession, we cannot perceive that succession, without a constant 
succession of varying ideas arising from it. 

Sect. 8. On the contrary, things that move so swift as not to affect the 
senses distinctly with several distinguishable distances of their motion, and 
so cause not any train of ideas in the mind, are not also perceived to move ; 
for any thing that moves round about in a circle in less time than our ideas 
are wont to succeed one another in our minds, is not perceived to move, 
but seems to be a perfect entire circle of that matter or colour, and not a 
part of a circle in motion. 

Sect. 9. The train of ideas has a certain degree of quickness. — Hence 
I leave it to others to judge whether it be not probable that our ideas do, 
whilst we are awake, succeed one another in our minds at certain distances, 
not much unlike the images in the inside of a lantern turned round by the 
heat of a candle. This appearance of theirs in train, though perhaps it 
may be sometimes faster, and sometime slower, yet I guess, varies not 
very much in a waking man : there seem to be certain bounds to the quick- 
ness and slowness of the succession of those ideas one to another in our 
minds, beyond which they can neither delay nor hasten. 

Sect. 10. The reason I have for this odd conjecture is from observing, 
that in the impressions made upon any of our senses we can but to a cer- 
tain degree perceive any succession ; which, if exceeding quick, the sense 
of succession is lost, even in cases where it is evident that there is a real 
succession. Let a cannon-bullet pass through a room, and in its way take 
with it any limb or fleshy parts of a man ; it is as clear as any demonstra- 
tion can be, that it must strike successively the two sides of the room. It 
is also evident, that it must touch one part of the flesh first, and another 
after, and so in succession : and yet I believe nobody who ever felt the 
pain of such a shot, or heard the blow against the two distant walls, could 
perceive any succession either in the pain or sound of so swift a stroke. 
Such a part of duration as this, wherein we perceive no succession, is that 
which we may call an instant, and is that which takes up the time of only 
one idea in our minds without the succession of another, wherein, there- 
fore, we perceive no succession at all. 

Sect. 11. This also happens where the motion is so slow as not to sup- 
ply a constant train of fresh ideas to the senses as fast as the mind is ca- 
pable of receiving new ones into it ; and so other ideas of our own thoughts, 
having room to come into our minds between those offered to our senses 
by the moving body, there the sense of motion is lost ; and the body, though 
it really moves, yet not changing perceivable distance with some other bo- 
dies as fast as the ideas of our own minds do naturally follow one another in 
train, the thing seems to stand still, as is evident in the hands of clocks 
and shadows of sun-dials, and other constant but slow motions ; where, 
though after certain intervals, we perceive by the change of distance that 
it hath moved, yet the motion itself we perceive not. 

Sect. 12. This train the measure of other successions. — So that to me 
it seems that the constant and regular succession of ideas in a waking man 
is, as it were, the measure and standard of all other successions : whereof if 
any one either exceeds the pace of our ideas, as where two sounds or pains, 
&c. take up in their succession the duration of but one idea, or else where 
any motion or succession is so slow as that it keeps not pace with the ideas in 
our minds, or the quickness in which they take their turns ; as when any 
one or more ideas, in their ordinary course, come into our mind between 
those which are offered to the sight by the different perceptible distances 
of a body in motion, or between sounds or smells following one another ; 



Ch. 14. DURATION, AND ITS SIMPLE MODES. 123 

there also the sense of a constant continued succession is lost, and we pei- 
ceive it not but with certain gaps of rest between. 

Sect. 13. The mind cannot fix long on one invariable idea. — If it be so 
that the ideas of our minds, whilst we have any there, do constantly change 
and shift in a continual succession, it would be impossible, may any one 
say, for a man to think long of any one thing. By which, if it be meant 
that a man may have one self-same single idea a long time alone in his 
mind, without any variation at all, I think, in matter of fact, it is not pos- 
sible ; for which (not knowing how the ideas of our minds are framed, of 
what materials they are made, whence they have their light, and how they 
come to make their appearances) I can give no other reason but experi- 
ence : and I would have any one try whether he can keep one unvaried 
single idea in his mind without any other, for any considerable time to- 
gether. 

Sect. 14. For trial, let him take any figure, any degree of light or white- 
ness, or what other he pleases ; and he will, I suppose, find it difficult to 
keep all other ideas out of his mind ; but that some, either of another kind, 
or various considerations of that idea (each of which considerations is a new 
idea) will constantly succeed one another in his thoughts, let him be as 
wary as he can. 

Sect. 15. All that is in a man's power in this case, I think, is only to 
mind and observe what the ideas are that take their turns in his understand- 
ing ; or else to direct the sort, and call in such as he hath a desire or use 
of: but hinder the constant succession of fresh ones, I think, he cannot, 
though he may commonly choose whether he will needfully observe and 
consider them. 

Sect. 16. Ideas, however made, include no sense of motion. — Whether 
these several ideas in a man's mind be made by certain motions, I will not 
here dispute : but this I am sure, that they include no idea of motion in their ap- 
pearance ; and if a man had not the idea of motion otherwise, I think he would 
have none at all ; which is enough to my present purpose, and sufficiently 
shows that the notice we take of the ideas of our own minds appearing 
there one after another, is that which gives us the idea of succession and 
duration, without which we should have no such ideas at all. It is not then 
motion, but the constant train of ideas in our minds, whilst we are waking, 
that furnishes us with the idea of duration ; whereof motion no otherwise 
gives us any perception than as it causes in our minds a constant succes- 
sion of ideas, as I have before showed: and we have as clear an idea of 
succession and duration, by the train of other ideas succeeding one another 
in our minds, without the idea of any motion, as by the train of ideas caused 
by the uninterrupted sensible change of distance between two bodies, which 
we have from motion ; and therefore we should as well have the idea of 
duration were there no sense of motion at all. 

Sect. 17. Time is duration set out by measures. — Having thus got the 
idea of duration, the next thing natural for the mind to do is to get some 
measure of this common duration, whereby it might judge of its different 
lengths, and consider the distinct order wherein several things exist, with- 
out which a great part of our knowledge would be confused, and a great 
part of history be rendered very useless. This consideration of duration, 
is set out by certain periods, and marked by certain measures or epochs, 
is that I think, which most properly we call time. 

Sect. 18. A good measure of time must divide its whole duration into 
iqual periods.— In the measuring of extension there is nothing more required 
mt the application of the standard or measure we make use of to the thing 
>f whose extension we would be informed. But in the measuring of du- 
ation this cannot be done, because no two different parts of succession 
•an be put together to measure one another : and nothing being a measure 
>f duration but duration, as nothing is of extension but extension, we cannot 



124 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

keep by us any standing unvarying measure of duration, which consists in 
a constant fleeting succession, as we can of certain lengths of extension, 
as inches, feet, yards, &c. marked out in permanent parcels of matter. 
Nothing, then, could serve well for a convenient measure of time but what 
has divided the whole length of its duration into apparently equal portions, 
by constantly repeated periods. What portions of duration are not distin- 
guished, or considered as distinguished and measured by such periods, 
come not so properly under the notion of time, as appears by such phrases 
as these, viz. before all time, and when time shall be no more. 

Sect. 19. The revolutions of the sun and moon, the properest mea- 
sures of time. — The diurnal and annual revolutions of the sun, as having 
been, from the beginning of nature, constant, regular, and universally ob- 
servable by all mankind, and supposed equal to one another, have been 
with reason made use of for the measure of duration. But the distinc- 
tion of days and years having depended on the motion of the sun, it has 
brought this mistake with it, that it has been thought that motion and 
duration were the measure one of another : for men, in the measuring of 
the length of time, having been accustomed to the ideas of minutes, hours, 
days, months, years, &c. which they found themselves upon any mention 
of time or duration presently to think on, all which portions of time were 
measured out by the motion of those heavenly bodies ; they were apt to 
confound time and motion, or at least to think that they had a necessary 
connexion one with another : whereas any constant periodical appearance 
or alteration of ideas in seemingly equidistant spaces of duration, if constant- 
ly and universally observable, would have as well distinguished the intervals 
of time as those that have been made use of. For supposing the sun, which 
some have taken to be a fire, had been lighted up at the same distance of 
time that it now every day comes about to the same meridian, and then 
gone out again about twelve hours after, and that in the space of an annual 
revolution it had sensibly increased in brightness and heat, and so decreas- 
ed again ; would not such regular appearances serve to measure out the 
distances of duration, to all that could observe it, as well without as with 
motion 1 For if the . appearances were constant, universally observable, 
and in equidistant periods, they would serve mankind for measures of time 
as well, were the motion away. 

Sect. 20. But not by their motion, but periodical appearances. — For 
the freezing of water, or the blowing of a plant, returning at equidistant 
periods in all parts of the earth, would as well serve men to reckon their 
years by, as the motions of the sun : and in effect we see that some people 
in America counted their years by the coming of certain birds among them 
at their certain seasons, and leaving them at others. For a fit of an ague, 
the sense of hunger or thirst, a smell, or a taste, or any other idea return- 
ing constantly at equidistant periods, and making itself universally be taken 
notice of, would not fail to measure out the course of succession, and dis- 
tinguish the distance of time. Thus, we see that men born blind count 
time well enough by years, whose revolutions yet they cannot distinguish 
by motions that they perceive not : and I ask whether a blind man, who 
distinguished his years either by the heat of summer or cold of winter ; by 
the smell of any flower of the spring, or taste of any fruit of the autumn ; 
would not have a better measure of time than the Romans had before the 
reformation of their calendar by Julius Csesar, or many other people, whose 
years, notwithstanding the motion of the sun, which they pretend to make 
use of, are very irregular? And it adds no small difficulty to chronology, that 
the exact lengths of the years that several nations counted by are hard to be 
known, they differing very much one from another, and I think I may say 
all of them from the precise motion of the sun. And if the sun moved from 
the creation to the flood, constantly in the equator, and so equally dispersed 
its light and heat to all habitable parts of the earth, in days all c<f the same 



Ch. 14. DURATION, AND ITS SIMPLE MODES. 125 

length, without its annual variations to the tropics, as a late ingenious author 
supposes(a) : I do not think it very easy to imagine that (notwithstanding 
the motion of the sun) men should, in the antediluvian world, from the be- 
ginning, count by years, or measure their time by periods, that had no sen- 
sible marks very obvious to distinguish them by. 

Sect. 21. No two parts of duration can be certainly known to be equal. 
— But perhaps it will be said, without a regular motion, such as of the sun 
or some other, how could it ever be known that such periods were equal ] 
To which I answer, the equality of any other returning appearances might 
be known by the same way that that of days was known or presumed to 
be so at first ; which was only by judging of them by the train of ideas 
which had passed in men's mind, in the intervals : by which train of ideas 
discovering inequality in the natural days, but none in the artificial days, 
the artificial days, or w%Qyi/utpx, were guessed to be equal, which was suf- 
ficient to make them serve for a measure : though exacter search has since 
discovered inequality in the diurnal revolutions of the sun, and we know 
not whether the annual also be not unequal. These yet, by their presumed 
►and apparent equality, serve as well to reckon time by (though not to mea- 
sure the parts of duration exactly) as if they could be proved to be exactly 
equal. We must therefore carefully distinguish betwixt duration itself 
and the measures we make use of to judge of its length. Duration in itself 
is to be considered as going on in one constant, equal, uniform, course : 
but none of the measures of it, which we make use of, can be known to 
do so ; nor can we be assured that their assigned parts or periods are 
equal in duration one to another ; for two successive lengths of duration, 
however measured, can never be demonstrated to be equal. The motion 
of the sun, which the world used so long and so confidently for an exact 
measure of duration, has, as I said, been found in its several parts unequal : 
and though men have of late made use of a pendulum, as a more steady 
and regular motion than that of the sun, or (to speak more truly) of the 
earth ; yet if any one should be asked how he certainly knows that the two 
successive swings of a pendulum are equal, it would be very hard to satisfy 
him that they are infallibly so : since we cannot be sure that the cause of 
that motion, which is unknown to us, shall always operate equally: and 
we are sure that the medium in which the pendulum moves is not constantly 
the same : either of which varying, may alter the equality of such periods, 
and thereby destroy the certainty and exactness of the measure by motion, 
as well as any other periods of other appearances; the notion of duration 
still remaining clear, though our measures of it cannot any of them be de- 
monstrated to be exact. Since then no two portions of succession can be 
brought together, it is impossible ever certainly to know their equality. 
All that we can do for a measure of time, is to take such as have continual 
successive appearances at seemingly equidistant periods ; of which seeming 
equality we have no other measure but such as the train of our own ideas 
have lodged in our memories, with the concurrence of other probable rea 
sons, to persuade us of their equality. 

Sect. 22. Time not the measure of motion. — One thing seems strange 
to me, that whilst all men manifestly measured time by the motion of the 
great and visible bodies of the world, time yet should be defined to be the 
" measure of motion;" whereas it is obvious to every one who reflects ever 
so little on it, that, to measure motion, space is as necessary to be consid- 
ered as time ; and those who look a little farther, will find also the bulk of 
the thing moved necessary to be taken into the computation by any one who 
will estimate or measure motion, so as to judge right of it. Nor indeed does 
motion any otherwise conduce to the measuring of duration, than as it con- 
stantly brings about the return of certain sensible ideas in seeming equidis- 

(a) Dr Burnet's Theory of the Earth. 



126 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

tant periods. For if the motion of the sun were as unequal as of a ship 
driven by unsteady winds, sometimes very slow, and at others irregularly 
very swift ; or if, being constantly equally swift, it yet was not circular, and 
produced not the same appearances, it would not at all help us to measure 
time, any more than the seeming unequal motion of a comet does. 

Sect. 23. Minutes, hours, days, and years, not necessary measures of 
duration. — Minutes, hours, days, and years, are then no more necessary 
to time or duration, than inches, feet, yards, and miles, marked out in any 
matter, are to extension: for though we in this part of the universe, by the 
constant use of them, as of periods set out by the revolutions of the sun, or as 
known parts of such periods, have fixed the ideas of such lengths of dura- 
tion in our minds, which we apply to all parts of time, whose lengths we 
would consider; yet there may be other parts of the universe, where they 
no more use these measures of ours, than in Japan they do our inches, feet, 
or miles ; but yet something analogous to them there must be. For without 
some regular periodical returns, we could not measure ourselves, or signify 
to others the length of any duration, though at the same time the world 
were as full of motion as it is now, but no part of it disposed into regular and 
apparently equidistant revolutions. But the different measures that may be 
made use of for the account of time do not at all alter the notion of dura- 
tion, which is the thing to be measured, no more than the different stand- 
ards of a foot and a cubit alter the notion of extension to those who make 
use of those different measures. 

Sect. 24. Our measure of time applicable to duration before time. — 
The mind having once got such a measure of time as the annual revolution 
of the sun, can apply that measure to duration, wherein that measure itself 
did not exist, and with which, in the reality of its being, it had nothing to do : 
for should one say, that Abraham was born in the two thousand seven hundred 
and twelfth year of the Julian period, it is altogether as intelligible as reck- 
oning from the beginning of the world, though there were so far back no 
motion of the sun, nor any motion at all. For though the Julian period be 
supposed to begin several hundred years before there were really either 
days, nights, or years, marked out by any revolutions of the sun ; yet we 
reckon as right, and thereby measure durations as well, as if really at that 
time the sun had existed, and kept the same ordinary motion it doth now. 
The idea of duration equal to an annual revolution of the sun is as easily 
applicable in our thoughts to duration, where no sun nor motion was, as 
the idea of a foot or yard, taken from bodies here, can be applied in our 
thoughts to distances beyond the confines of the world, where are no bodies 
at all. 

Sect. 25. For supposing it were five thousand six hundred and thirty- 
nine miles, or millions of miles, from this place to the remotest body of the 
universe (for, being finite, it must be at a certain distance) as we suppose 
it to be five thousand six hundred and thirty nine years from this time to 
the first existence of any body in the beginning of the world; we can in 
our thoughts, apply this measure of a year to duration before the creation, 
or beyond the duration of bodies or motion, as we can this measure of a 
mile to space beyond the utmost bodies ; and by the one measure duration 
where there was no motion, as well as by the other measure space in our 
thoughts where there is no body. 

Sect. 26. If it be objected to me here, that, in this way of explaining 
of time, I have begged what I should not, viz. that the world is neither 
eternal nor infinite ; I answer, that to my present purpose it is not needful, 
in this place, to make use of arguments to evince the world to be finite, 
both in duration and extension ; but it being at least as conceivable as the 
contrary, I have certainly the liberty to suppose it, as well as any one hath 
to suppose the contrary ; and I doubt not but that every one that will go 
about it, may easily conceive in his mind the beginning of motion, though 



Ch. 14. DURATION, AND ITS SIMPLE MODES. 127 

not of all duration, and so may come to a stop and non ultra in his con- 
sideration of motion. So also in his thoughts he may set limits to body 
and the extension belonging to it, but not to space where no body is ; the 
utmost bounds of space and duration being beyond the reach of thought, 
as well as the utmost bounds of number are beyond the largest comprehen- 
sion of the mind ; and all for the same reason, as we shall see in another 
place. 

Sect. 27. Eternity. — By the same means, therefore, and from the same 
original that we come to have the idea of time, we have also that idea which 
we call eternity; viz. having got the idea of succession and duration, by re- 
flecting on the train of our own ideas, caused in us either by the natural 
appearances of those ideas coming constantly of themselves into our waking 
thoughts, or else caused by external objects successively affecting our sen- 
,ses ; and having from the revolutions of the sun got the ideas of certain 
lengths of duration, we can in our thoughts add such lengths of duration to 
one another, as often as we please, and apply them, so added, to durations 
past or to come : and this we can continue to do on, without bounds or 
limits, and proceed in infinitum, and apply thus the length of the annual 
motion of the sun to duration, supposed before the sun's, or any other 
motion had its being ; which is no more difficult or absurd, than to apply 
the notion I have of the moving of a shadow one hour to-day upon the sun 
dial to the duration of something last night, v. g. the burning of a candle, 
which is now absolutely separate from all actual motion : and it is as impos- 
sible for the duration of that flame for an hour last night to coexist with any 
motion that now is, or for ever shall be, as for any part of duration, that 
was before the beginning of the world to coexist with the motion of the 
sun now. But yet this hinders not, but that having the idea of the length 
of the motion of the shadow on a dial between the marks of two hours, I can 
as distinctly measure in my thoughts the duration of that candlelight last night, 
as I can the duration of any thing that does now exist: and it is no more than 
to think, that had the sun shone then on the dial, and moved after the same 
rate it doth now, the shadow on the dial would have passed from one hour 
line to another, whilst that flame of the candle lasted. 

Sect. 28. The notion of an hour, day, or year, being only the idea I 
have of the length of certain periodical regular motions, neither of which 
motions do ever all at once exist, but only in the ideas I have of them in my 
memory, derived from my senses or reflection ; I can with the same ease, 
and for the same reason, apply it in my thoughts to duration antecedent 
to all manner of motion, as well as to any thing that is but a minute, or a 
day, antecedent to the motion, that at this very moment the sun is in. All 
things past are equally and perfectly at rest ; and to this way of consider- 
ation of them are all one, whether they were before the beginning of the 
world, or but yesterday : the measuring of any duration by some motion 
depending not at all on the real coexistence of that thing to that motion, 
or any other periods of revolution, but the having a clear idea of the length 
of some periodical known motion, or other intervals of duration in my mind, 
and applying that to the duration of the thing I would measure. 

Sect. 29. Hence we see, that some men imagine the duration of the 
world, from its first existence to this present year 1689, to have been five 
thousand six hundred and thirty-nine years, or equal to five thousand six 
hundred and thirty-nine annual revolutions of the sun, and others a great 
deal more ; as the Egyptians of old, who in the time of Alexander counted 
twenty-three thousand years from the reign of the sun ; and the Chinese 
now, who account the world three millions two hundred and sixty-nine 
thousand years old or more: which longer duration of the world, according 
to their computation, though I should not believe it to be true, yet I can 
. equally imagine it with them, and as truly understand, and say one is lon- 
ger than the other, as I understand that Methusalem's life was longer than 



128 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

Enoch's. And if the common reckoning of five thousand six hundred and 
thirty-nine should be true (as it may be as well as any other assigned,) it 
hinders not at all my imagining what others mean when they make the 
world one thousand years older, since every one may with the same facility 
imagine (I do not say believe) the world to be fifty thousand years old, as 
five thousand six hundred and thirty-nine ; and may as well conceive the 
duration of fifty thousand years as five thousand six hundred and thirty- 
nine. Whereby it appears, that to the measuring the duration of any thing 
y time, it is not requisite that that thing should be coexistent to the mo- 
don we measure by, or any other periodical revolution; but it suffices to 
this purpose, that we have the idea of the length of any regular periodical 
appearances, which we can in our minds apply to duration, with which 
*he motion or appearance never coexisted. 

Sect. 30. For as in the history of the creation, delivered by Moses, I 
can imagine that light existed three days before the sun was, or had any 
motion, barely by thinking, that the duration of light, before the sun was 
created, was so long as (if the sun had moved then, as it doth now) would 
have been equal to three of his diurnal revolutions ; so by the same way I 
can have an idea of the chaos, or angels being created before there was 
either light, or any continued motion, a minute, an hour, a day, a year, or 
one thousand years. For if I can but consider duration equal to one mi- 
nute, before either the being or motion of any body, I can add one minute 
more till I come to sixty ; and by the same way of adding minutes, hours, 
or years, (i. e. such or such parts of the sun's revolutions, or any other pe- 
riod whereof I have the idea) proceed in infinitum, and suppose a duration 
exceeding as many such periods as I can reckon, let me add whilst I will, 
which I think is the notion we have of eternity, of whose infinity we have 
no other notion than we have of the infinity of number, to which we can 
add for ever without end. 

Sect. 31. And thus I think it is plain, that from those two fountains of 
all knowledge before mentioned, viz. reflection and sensation, we get ideas 
of duration, and the measures of it. 

For, first, By observing what passes in our minds, how our ideas there 
in train constantly some vanish, and others begin to appear, we come by 
the idea of succession. 

Secondly, By observing a distance in the parts of this succession, we get 
the idea of duration. 

Thirdly, By sensation observing certain appearances, at certain regular 
and seeming equidistant periods, we get the ideas of certain lengths or 
measures of duration, as minutes, hours, days, years, &c. 

Fourthly, By being able to repeat those measures of time or ideas of 
stated length of duration in our minds, as often as we will, we can come 
to imagine duration, where nothing does really endure or exist ; and thus 
we imagine to-morrow, next year, or seven years hence. 

Fifthly, By being able to repeat ideas of any length of time, as of a mi- 
nute, a year, or an age, as often as we will, in our own thoughts, and ad- 
ding them one to another, without ever coming to the end of such addition 
any nearer than we can to the end of number, to which we can always add ; 
we come by the idea of eternity, as the future eternal duration of our souls, 
as well as the eternity of that infinite Being, which must necessarily have 
always existed. 

Sixthly, By considering any part of infinite duration, as set out by pe- 
riodical measures, we come by the idea of what we call time in general. 



Ch. 15. DURATION AND EXPANSION CONSIDERED. 129 



CHAPTER XV 

OF DURATION AND EXPANSION CONSIDERED TOGETHER. 

Sect. 1. Both capable of greater and less. — Though we have in the 
precedent chapters dwelt pretty long on the considerations of space and 
duration ; yet they being ideas of general concernment, that have some- 
thing very abstruse and peculiar in their nature, the comparing them one 
with another may perhaps be of use for their illustration ; and we may have 
the more clear and distinct conception of them, by taking a view of them 
together. Distance or space, in its simple abstract conception, to avoid 
confusion, I call expansion, to distinguish it from extension, which by some 
is used to express this distance only as it is in the solid parts of matter, and so 
includes, or at least intimate, the idea of body: whereas the idea of pure 
distance includes no such thing. I prefer also the word expansion to space, 
because space is often applied to distance of fleeting successive parts, which 
never exist together, as well as to those which are permanent. In both 
these (viz. expansion and duration) the mind has this common idea of 
continued lengths, capable of greater or less quantities : for a man has as 
clear an idea of the difference of the length of an hour and a day, as of an 
inch and a foot. 

Sect. 2. Expansion not bounded by matter. — The mind having got the 
jdea of the length of any part of expansion, let it be a span or a pace, or 
what length you will, can, as has been said, repeat that idea ; and so, ad- 
ding it to the former, enlarge its idea of length, and make it equal to two 
spans, or two paces, and so as often as it will, till it equals the distance 
of any parts of the earth, one from another, and increase thus, till it amounts 
to the distance of the sun or remotest star. By such a progression as this, 
setting out from the place where it is, or any other place, it can proceed 
and pass beyond all those lengths, and find nothing to stop its going on, 
either in, or without body. It is true, we can easily, in our thoughts, come 
to the end of solid extension ; the extremity and bounds of all body we have 
no difficulty to arrive at : but when the mind is there, it finds nothing to 
hinder its progress into this endless expansion ; of that it can neither find 
nor conceive any end. Nor let any one say, that beyond the bounds of 
body there is nothing at all, unless he will confine God within the limits of 
matter. Solomon, whose understanding was filled and enlarged with wis- 
dom, seems to have other thoughts, when he says, " heaven, and the heaven 
of heavens, cannot contain thee :" and he, I think, very much magnifies to 
himself the capacity of his own' understanding, who persuades himself that 
he can extend his thoughts farther than God exists, or imagine any expan- 
sion where he is not. 

Sect. 3. Nor duration by motion. — Just so is it in duration. The mind 
having got the idea of any length of duration, can double, multiply, and 
enlarge it, not only beyond its own, but beyond the existence of all cor- 
poreal beings, and all the measures of time, taken from the great bodies of 
the world and their motions. But yet every one easily admits, that though 
we make duration boundless, as certainly it is, we cannot yet extend it be- 
yond all being. God, every one easily allows, fills eternity, and it is hard 
to find a reason why any one should doubt that he likewise fills immen- 
sity. His infinite being is certainly as boundless one way as another, and 
methinks it ascribes a little too much to matter to say where there is no 
body, there is nothing. 

Sect. 4. Why men more easily admit infinite duration than infinite 
expansion. — Hence, I think, we may learn the reason why every one fami- 
R 



130 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

1 liarly, and without the least hesitation, speaks of, and supposes, eternity, 
and sticks not to ascribe infinity to duration; but it is with more doubting 
and reserve that many admit or suppose the infinity of space. The reason 
whereof seems to me to be this ; that duration and extension being used as 
names of affections belonging to other beings, we easily conceive in God 
infinite duration, and we cannot avoid doing so ; but not attributing to him 
extension, but only to matter, which is finite, we are apter to doubt of the 
existence of expansion without matter, of which alone we commonly sup- 
pose it an attribute. And therefore when men pursue their thoughts of 
space, they are apt to stop at the confines of body, as if space were there 
at an end too, and reached no farther. Or if their ideas upon consideration 
carry them farther, yet they term what is beyond the limits of the universe 
imaginary space ; as if it were nothing, because there is no body existing 
in it : whereas duration, antecedent to all body, and to the motions which 
it is measured by, they never term imaginary, because it is never supposed 
void of some other real existence. And if the names of things may 
at all direct our thoughts towards the originals of men's ideas (as I am 
apt to think they may very much) one may have occasion to think, by 
the name duration, that the continuation of existence, with a kind of resis- 
tance to any destructive force, and the continuation of solidity (which is 
apt to be confounded with, and, if we look into the minute anatomical parts 
of matter, is little different from, hardness) were thought to have some 
analogy, and gave occasion to words so near of kin as durare and durum 
esse. And that durare is applied to the idea of hardness as well as that 
of existence, we see in Horace, epod. xvi. " ferro duravit secula." But 
be that as it will, this is certain, that whoever pursues his own thoughts, 
>vill find them sometimes launch out beyond the extent of body into the 
infinity of space or expansion ; the idea whereof is distinct and separate 
from body and all other things : which may (to those who please) be a sub- 
ject of farther meditation. 

Sect. 5. Time to durationisas place to expansion. — Time in general 
is to duration as place to expansion. They are so much of those bound- 
less oceans of eternity and immensity as is set out and distinguished from 
the rest, as it were, by landmarks ; and so are made use of to denote 
the position of finite real beings, in respect one to another, in those uni- 
form infinite oceans of duration and space. These, rightly considered, are 
only ideas of determinate distances, from certain known points fixed in 
distinguishable sensible things, and supposed to keep the same distance 
one from another. From such points fixed in sensible beings we reckon, 
and from them we measure our portions of those infinite quantities ; which, 
so considered, are that which we call time and place. For duration and 
space being in themselves uniform and boundless, the order and position 
of things, without such known settled points, would be lost in them, and 
all things would lie jumbled in an incurable confusion. 

Sect. 6. Time and place are taken for so much of either, as are set out 
by the existence and motion of bodies. — Time and place, taken thus for 
determinate distinguishable portions of those infinite abysses of space and 
duration, set out or supposed to be distinguished from the rest by marks 
and known boundaries, have each of them a twofold acceptation. 

First, Time in general is commonly taken for so much of infinite duration 
as is measured by, and coexistent with, the existence and motions of the 
great bodies of the universe, as far as we know any thing of them: and in 
this sense time begins and ends with the frame of this sensible world, as 
.n these phrases before mentioned, before all time, or when time shall be 
no more. Place likewise is taken sometime for that portion of infinite 
space which is possessed by, and comprehended within, the material world, 
and is thereby distinguished from the rest of expansion ; though this may 
more properly be called extension than place. Within these two are con- 



Ch. 15. DURATION AND EXPANSION CONSIDERED. 131 

Sned, and by the observable parts of them are measured and determined, 
the particular time or duration, and the particular extension and place of 
all corporeal beings. 

Sect. 7. Sometimes for so much of either, as we design by measures 
taken from the bulk or motion of bodies. — Secondly, Sometimes the word 
time is used in a larger sense, and is applied to parts of that infinite dura- 
tion, not that were really distinguished and measured out by this real ex- 
istence, and periodical motions of bodies that were appointed from the be- 
ginning to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years, and are 
accordingly our measure of time ; — but such other portions too of that in- 
finite uniform duration, which we, upon any occasion, do suppose equal to 
certain lengths of measured time ; and so consider them as bounded and 
determined. For if we should suppose the creation or fall of the angels 
was at the beginning of the Julian period, we should speak properly enough, 
and should be understood, if we said, it is a longer time since the creation 
of angels than the creation of the world by seven thousand six hundred and 
forty years ; whereby we would mark out so much of that undistinguished 
duration as we suppose equal to, and would have admitted, seven thousand 
six hundred and forty annual revolutions of the sun, moving at the rate it 
now does. And thus likewise we sometimes speak of place, distance, or 
bulk, in the great inane beyond the confines of the world, when we consid- 
er so much of that space as is equal to, or capable to receive a body of any 
assigned dimensions, as a cubic foot ; or do suppose a point in it at such 
a certain distance from any part of the universe. 

Sect. 8. They belong to all beings. — Where and when are questions 
belonging to all finite existences, and are by us always reckoned from some 
known parts of this sensible world, and from some certain epochs marked 
out to us by the motions observable in it. Without some such fixed parts 
or periods, the order of things would be lost to our finite understandings, in the 
boundless invariable oceans of duration and expansion which comprehend 
in them all finite beings, and in their full extent belong only to the Deity. 
And therefore we are not to wonder that we comprehend them not, and do 
so often find our thoughts at a loss, when we would consider them either 
abstractly in themselves, or as any way attributed to the first incomprehen- 
sible being. But when applied to any particular finite beings, the extension 
of any body is so much of that infinite space as the bulk of the body takes 
up ; and place is the position of any body, when considered at a certain 
distance from some other. As the idea of the particular duration of any thing is 
an idea of that portion of infinite duration which passed during the existence 
of that thing ; so the time when the thing existed, is the idea of that space 
of duration which passed between some known and fixed period of dura- 
tion, and the being of that thing. One shows the distance of the extremi- 
ties of the bulk or existence of the same thing, as that it is a foot square, 
or lasted two years ; the other shows the distance of it in place or existence 
from other fixed points of space or duration, as that it was in the middle 
of Lincoln's-inn-fields, or the first degree of Taurus, and in the year of 
our Lord 1671, or the 1000th year of the Julian period: all which distances we 
measure by preconceived ideas of certain lengths of space and duration, as 
inches, feet, miles, and degrees ; and in the other, minutes, days, and years. 

Sect. 9. All the parts of extension are extension; and all the parts of 
duration are duration. — There is one thing more wherein space and dura- 
tion have a great conformity : and that is, though they are justly reckoned 
among our simple ideas, yet none of the distinct ideas we have of either is 
without all manner of composition(2) ; it is the very nature of both of them 

(2) It has been objected to MrLocke, that if space consists of parts, as it is con- 
fessed in this place, he should not have reckoned it in the number of simple ideas ; 
because it seems to be inconsistent with what he says elsewhere, that a simple 



132 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

to consist of parts : but their parts being all of the same kind, and without 
the mixture of any other idea, hinder them not from having a place among 
simple ideas. Could the mind, as in number, come to so small a part of 
extension or duration as excluded divisibility, that would be, as it were, 
the indivisible unit or idea; by repetition of which it would make its more 
enlarged ideas of extension and duration. But since the mind is not able 
to frame an idea of any space without parts, instead thereof it makes use of 
the common measures, which, by familiar use, in each country, have imprint- 
ed themselves on the memory, (as inches and feet, or cubits and parasangs ; 
and so seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years in duration :) the mind 
makes use, I say, of such ideas as these, as simple ones ; and these are the 
component parts of larger ideas, which the mind, upon occasion, makes 
by the addition of such known lengths, which it is acquainted with. On the 
other side, the ordinary smallest measure we have of either is looked on as 
an unit in number, when the mind by division would reduce them into less 

idea is uncompounded, and contains in it nothing but one uniform appearance or 
conception of the mind, and is not distinguishable into different ideas. It is 
farther objected, that Mr Locke has not given in the eleventh chapter of the second 
book, where he begins to speak of simple ideas, an exact definition of what he 
understands by the Avords simple ideas. To these difficulties Mr Locke answers 
thus : To begin with the last, he declares that he has not treated his subject in an 
order perfectly scholastic, having not had much familiarity with those sort of 
books daring the v> riting of his, and not remembering at all the method in which 
they are written ; and therefore his readers ought not to expect definitions regu- 
larly placed at the beginning of each new subject. Mr Locke contents himself to 
employ the principal terms that he uses, so that from his use of them the reader 
may easily comprehend what he means by them. But with respect to the term 
sinrvple idea, he has had the good luck to define that in the place cited in the 
objection ; and therefore there is no reason to supply that defect. The question 
then is to know whether the idea of extension agrees with this definition ? which 
will effectually agree to it, if it be understood in the sense Avhich Mr Locke had 
principally in his view ; for that composition which he designed to exclude in 
that definition was a composition of differeut ideas in the mind, and not a com- 
position of the same kind in a thing whose essence consists in having parts of the 
same kind, where you can never come to a part entirely exempted from this com- 
position. So that if the idea of extension consists in having partes extra partes 
(as the schools speak,) it is always, in the sense of Mr Locke, a simple idea; 
because the idea of having partes extra partes cannot be resolved into two other 
ideas. For the remainder of the objection made to Mr Locke, with respect to the 
nature of extension, Mr Locke was aware of it, as may be seen in sect. 9, chap. 
15, of the second book, where he says, that " the least portion of space or exten- 
sion, whereof we have a clear and distinct idea, may perhaps be the fittest to be 
considered by us as a simple idea of that kind out of which our complex 
modes of space and extension are made up. " So that, according to Mr Locke, 
it may very fitly be called a simple idea, since it is the least idea of space that 
the mind can form to itself, and that cannot be divided by the mind into any less, 
-whereof it has in itself any determined perception. From whence it follows, that 
it is to the mind one simple idea : and that is sufficient to take away this objection : 
for it is not the design of Mr Locke, in this place, to discourse of any thing but 
concerning the idea of the mind. But if this is not sufficient to clear the diffi- 
culty, Mr Locke hath nothing more to add, but that if the idea of extension is so 
peculiar that it cannot exactly agree with the definition that he has given of those 
simple ideas, so that it differs in some manner from all others of that kind, he 
thinks it is better to leave it there exposed to this difficulty, than to make a new 
division in his favour. It is enough for Mr Locke that his meaning can be un- 
derstood. It is very common to observe intelligible discourses spoiled by too 
much subtlety in nice divisions. We ought to put things together as well as we 
can, doctrinse causa : but, after all, several things will not be bundled up to- 
gether under our terras and ways of speaking, 



Ch. 15. DURATION AND EXPANSION CONSIDERED. 133 

fractions. Though on both sides, both in addition and division, either of 
6pace or duration, when the idea under consideration becomes very big or 
very small, its precise bulk becomes very obscure and confused ; and it is 
the number of its repeated additions or divisions that alone remains clear 
and distinct, as will easily appear to any one who will let his thoughts loose in 
the vast expansion of space, or divisibility of matter. Every part of dura- 
tion is duration too ; and every part of extension is extension, both of them 
capable of addition or division in infinitum. But the least portions of either 
of them, whereof we have clear and distinct ideas, may perhaps be fittest 
to be considered by us as the simple ideas of that kind, out of which our 
complex modes of space, extension, and duration, are made up, and into 
which they can again be distinctly resolved. Such a small part in duration 
may be called a moment, and is the time of one idea in our minds in the 
train of their ordinary succession there. The other wanting a proper name, 
I know not whether I may be allowed to call a sensible point, meaning there- 
by the least particle of matter or space we can discern, which is ordinarily 
about a minute, and to the sharpest eyes seldom less than thirty seconds of 
a circle, whereof the eye is the centre. 

Sect. 10. Their parts inseparable. — Expansion and duration have this 
farther agreement, that though they are both considered by us as having parts, 
yet their parts are not separable one from another, no, not even in thought ; 
though the parts of bodies from whence we take our measure of the 
one, and the parts of motion, or rather the succession of ideas in our minds, 
from whence we take the measure of the other, may be interrupted and 
separated ; as the one is often by rest, and the other is by sleep, which we 
call rest too. 

Sect. 11. Duration is as a line, expansion as a solid. — But there is 
this manifest difference between them; that the ideas of length, which we 
have of expansion, are turned every way, and so make figure, and breadth, 
and thickness ; but duration is but as it were the length of one straight line 
extended in infinitum^ not capable of multiplicity, variation, or figure ; 
but is one common measure of all existence whatsoever, wherein all things, 
whilst they exist, equally partake. For this present moment is common to 
all things that are now in being, and equally comprehends that part of 
their existence, as much as if they were all but one single being; and we 
may truly say, they all exist in the same moment of time. Whether an- 
gels and spirits have any analogy to this, in respect of expansion, is beyond 
my comprehension ; and, perhaps, for us, who have understandings and 
comprehensions suited to ou# own preservation, and the ends of our 
own being, but not to the reality and extent of all other beings ; it is near 
as hard to conceive any existence, or to have an idea of any real being, 
with a perfect negation of all manner of expansion, as it is to have the 
idea of any real existence with the perfect negation of all manner of dura- 
tion ; and therefore what spirits have to do with space, or how they com- 
municate in it, we know not. All that we know is, that bodies do each 
singly possess its proper portion of it, according to the extent of solid parts ; 
and thereby exclude all other bodies from having any share in that parti- 
cular portion of space, whilst it remains there. 

Sect. 12. Duration has never two parts together, expansion all to- 
gether. — Duration, and time, which is a part of it, is the idea we have of 
perishing distance, of which no two parts exist together, but follow each other 
in succession ; as expansion is the idea of lasting distance, all whose parts 
exist together, and are not capable of succession. And therefore, though 
we cannot conceive any duration without succession, nor can put it to- 
gether in our thoughts, that any being does now exist to-morrow, or possess 
at once more than the present moment of duration ; yet we can conceive 
the eternal duration of the Almighty far different from that of man, or any 
other finite being ; because man comprehends not in his knowledge, or pow- 
er, all past and future things ; his thoughts are but of yesterday, and he 



134 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

knows not what to-morrow will bring forth. What is once passed he can 
never recall, and what is yet to come he cannot make present. What I 
say of man I say of all finite beings ; who, though they may far exceed 
man in knowledge and power, yet are no more than the meanest creature, 
in comparison with God himself. Finite of any magnitude holds not any 
portion to infinite. God's infinite duration being accompanied with infinite 
knowledge and infinite power, he sees all things past and to come ; and 
they are no more distant from his knowledge, no farther removed from his 
sight, than the present : they all lie under the same view ; and there is no- 
thing wnieh he cannot make exist each moment he pleases. For the ex- 
istence of all things depending upon his good pleasure, all things exist every 
moment that he thinks fit to have them exist. To conclude, expansion 
and duration do mutually embrace and comprehend each other; every part 
of space being in every part of duration, and every part of duration in every 
part of expansion. Such a combination of two distinct ideas is, I suppose, 
scarce to be found in all that great variety we do or can conceive, and may 
afford matter to farther speculation. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

OF NUMBER. 

Sect. 1. Number the simplest and most universal idea. — Amongallthe 
ideas we have, as there is none suggested to the mind by more ways, so 
there is none more simple than that of unity, or one. It has no shadow of 
variety or composition in it : every object our senses are employed about, 
every idea in our understandings, every thought of our minds, bring this 
idea along with it; and therefore it is the most intimate to our thoughts, 
as well as it is, in its agreement to all other things, the' most universal idea 
we have. For number applies itself to men, angels, actions, thoughts, 
every thing that either doth exist or can be imagined. 

Sect. 2. Its modes made by addition. — By repeating this idea in our 
minds, and adding the repetitions together, we come by the complex ideas 
of the modes of it. Thus by adding one to one, we have the complex idea 
of a couple ; by putting twelve units together, we have the complex idea 
of a dozen ; and so of a score, or a million, or any other number. 

Sect. 3. Each mode distinct. — The simple modes of numbers are of all 
other the most distinct : every the least variation, which is an unit, making 
each combination as clearly different from that which approacheth nearest 
to it, as the most remote : two being as distinct from one as two hundred ; 
and the idea of two as distinct from the idea of three as the magnitude of the 
whole earth is from that of a mite. This is not so in other simple modes, 
in which it is not so easy, nor perhaps possible, for us to distinguish betwixt 
two approaching ideas, which yet are really different. For who will under- 
take to find a difference between the white of this paper, and that of the next 
degree to it ; or can form distinct ideas of every the least excess in extension. 

Sect. 4. Therefore demonstration in numbers the most precise. — The 
clearness and distinctness of each mode of number from all others, even those 
that approach nearest, makes me apt to think that demonstrations in num- 
bers, if they are not more evident and exact than in extension, yet they are 
more general in their use, and more determinate in their application ; be- 
cause the ideas of numbers are more precise and distinguishable than in exten- 
sion,where every equality and excess are not so easy to be observed or measur- 
ed ; because our thoughts cannot in space arrive at any determined small- 
ness, beyond which it cannot go, as an unit ; and therefore the quantity or 
proportion of any the least excess cannot be discovered : which is clear 



Ch. 16. NUMBER. 135 

otherwise in number, where, as has been said, ninety-one is as distinguish- 
able from ninety as from nine thousand, though ninety-one be the next im- 
mediate excess to ninety. But it is not so in extension, where whatsoever 
is more than just a foot or an inch, is not distinguishable from the standard 
of a foot or an inch : and in lines which appear of an equal length, one may 
be longer than the other by innumerable parts ; nor can any one assign an 
angle which shall be the next biggest to a right one. 

Sect. 5. Names necessary to numbers. — By the repeating, as has been 
said, the idea of an unit, and joining it to another unit, we make thereof 
one collective idea, marked by the name two. And whosoever can do this, 
and proceed on still, adding one more to the collective idea which he had 
of any number, and give a name to it, may count or have ideas for several 
collection of units, distinguished one from another, as far as he hath a se- 
ries of names for following numbers, and a memory to retain that series, 
with their several names ; all numeration being but still the adding of one unit 
to more, and giving to the whole together, as comprehended in one idea, a 
new or distinct name or sign, whereby to know it from those before and after, 
and distinguish it from every smaller or greater multitude of units. So that 
he can add one to one, and so to two, and so go on with his tale, taking 
still with him the distinct names belonging to every progression ; and so 
again, by subtracting an unit from each collection, retreat and lessen them; 
is capable of all the ideas of numbers within the compass of his language, 
or for which he hath names, though not perhaps of more. For the several 
simple modes of numbers, being in our minds but so many combinations 
of units, which have no variety, nor are capable of any other difference but 
more or less, names or marks for each distinct combination seem more ne- 
cessary than in any other sort of ideas. For without such names or marks 
we can hardly well make use of numbers in reckoning, especially where the 
combination is made up of any great multitude of units ; which put to- 
gether without a name or mark, to distinguish that precise collection, will 
hardly be kept from being a heap in confusion. 

Sect. 6. This I think to be the reason why some Americans I have 
spoken with, (who were otherwise of quick and rational parts enough,) could 
not, as we do, by any means count to one thousand, nor had any distinct 
idea of that number, though they could reckon very well to twenty ; because 
their language being scanty, and accommodated only to the few necessaries 
of a needy simple life, unacquainted either with trade or mathematics, had 
no words in it to stand for one thousand ; so that when they were discours- 
ed with of those great numbers, they would show the hairs of their head 
to express a great multitude which they could not number ; which inability, 
I suppose, proceeded from their want of names. The Tououpinambos had 
no names for numbers above five ; any number beyond that they made out 
by showing their fingers, and the fingers of others who were present(6). And 
I doubt not but we ourselves might distinctly number in words a great deal 
farther than we usually do, would we find out but some fit denomination to 
signify them by ; whereas in the way we take now to name them by millions 
of millions of millions, &c. it is hard to go beyond eighteen, or at most four 
and twenty decimal progressions, without confusion. But to show how 
much distinct names conduce to our well reckoning, or having useful ideas 
of numbers, let us set all these following figures in one continued line, as 
the marks of one number: v. g. 

Nonillions. Octillions. Septillions. Sextillions. Quintillion^. 

857324 162486 345896 437918 423147 

Quatrillions. Trillions. Billions. Millions. Units. 

248106 235421 261734 368149 623137 

{b) Histoire d'un voyage, fait en la terre duBrasil, par Jean de Lery, c. 20. 3 07 

3 8 2 



136 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2, 

The ordinary way of naming this number in English will be the often re- 
peating of millions, of millions, of millions, of millions, of millions, of mil- 
lions, of millions, of millions (which is the denomination of the second six 
figures.) In which way it will be very hard to have any distinguishing no- 
tions of this number ; but whether, by giving every six figures a new and or- 
derly denomination, these, and perhaps a great many more figures in pro- 
gression, might not easily be counted distinctly, and ideas of them both got 
more easily to ourselves, and more plainly signified to others, I leave it to 
be considered. This I mention only to show how necessary distinct names 
are to numbering, without pretending to introduce new ones of my inven- 
tion. 

Sect. 7. Why children number not earlier. — Thus children, either for 
want of names to mark the several progressions of numbers, or not having 
yet the faculty to collect scattered ideas into complex ones, and range them 
in a regular order, and so retain them in their memories, as is necessary to 
reckoning ; do not begin to number very early, nor proceed in it very far 
or steadily, till a good while after they are well furnished with good store 
of other ideas ; and one may often observe them discourse and reason pret- 
ty well, and have very clear conceptions of several other things, before they 
can tell twenty. And some, through the default of their memories, who 
cannot retain the several combinations of numbers, with their names annex- 
ed in their distinct orders, and the dependence of so long a train of numeral 
progressions, and their relation one to another, are not able all their lifetime 
to reckon or regularly go over any moderate series of numbers. For he 
that will count twenty, or have any idea of that number, must know that 
nineteen went before, with the distinct name or sign of every one of them, 
as they stand marked in their order ; for wherever this fails, a gap is made, 
the chain breaks, and the progress in numbering can go no farther. So 
that to reckon right, it is required, 1. That the mind distinguish carefully 
two ideas, which are different one from another only by the addition 
or subtraction of one unit. 2. That it retain in memory the names or 
marks of the several combinations, from an unit to that number ; and that 
not confusedly, and at random, but in that exact order that the numbers fol- 
low one another ; in either of which, if it trips, the whole business of number- 
ing will be disturbed, and there will remain only the confused idea of multi- 
tude, but the ideas necessary to distinct numeration will not be attained to. 

Sect. 8. Number measures all measurables. — This farther is observa- 
ble in number, that it is that which the mind makes use of in measuring 
all things that by us are measurable, which principally are expansion and 
duration ; and our idea of infinity, even when applied to those, seems to 
be nothing but the infinity of number. For what else are our ideas of eter- 
nity and immensity, but the repeated additions of certain ideas of imagined 
parts of duration and expansion, with the infinity of number, in which we 
can come to no end of addition] For such an inexhaustible stock, number 
(of all other our ideas) most clearly furnishes us with, as is obvious to every 
one. For let a man collect into one sum as great a number as he pleases, 
this multitude, how great soever, lessens not one jot the power of adding 
to it, or brings him any nearer the end of the inexhaustible stock of number, 
where still there remains as much to be added as if none were "aken out. 
And this endless addition or addibility (if any one like the word better) of 
numbers, so apparent to the mind, is that, I think, which gives us the clear- 
est and most distinct idea of infinity: of which more in the following chap- 
ter. 



Ch. 17, INFINITY 1S7 



CHAPTER XVII. 

OF INFINITY. 

Sect. 1. Infinity, in its original intention, attributed to space, dura- 
tion, and number. — He that would know what kind of idea it is to which 
•we give the name of infinity, cannot do it better than by considering to 
what infinity is by the mind more immediately attributed, and then how 
the mind comes to frame it. 

Finite and infinite seem to me to be looked upon by the mind as the 
modes of quantity, and to be attributed primarily in their first designation 
only to those things which have parts, and are capable of increase or dimi- 
nution, by the addition or subtraction of any the least part ; and such are 
the ideas of space, duration, and number, which we have considered in the 
foregoing chapters. It is true, that we cannot but be assured, that the 
great God, of whom and from whom are all things, is incomprehensibly 
infinite : but yet, when we apply to that first and supreme Being, our idea 
of infinite, in our weak and narrow thoughts, we do it primarily in respect 
of his duration and ubiquity; and, I think, more figuratively to his power 
wisdom, and goodness, and other attributes, which are properly inexhaus- 
tible and incomprehensible, &c. For, when we call them infinite, we have 
no other idea of this infinity, but what carries with it some reflection on, 
and intimation of, that number or extent of the acts or objects of God's pow- 
er, wisdom, and goodness, which can never be supposed so great or so 
many, which these attributes will not always surmount and exceed, let us 
multiply them in our thoughts as far as we can; with all the infinity of 
endless number. I do not pretend to say how these attributes are in God, 
who is infinitely beyond the reach of our narrow capacities. They do, 
without doubt, contain in them all possible perfection : but this, I say, is 
our way of conceiving them, and these our ideas of their infinity.' 

Sect. 2. The idea of finite easily found. — Finite, then, and infinite, being 
by the mind looked on as modifications of expansion and duration, the next 
thing to be considered is, how the mind comes by them. As for the idea 
of finite, there is no great difficulty. The obvious portions of extension, 
that affect our senses, carry with them into the mind the idea of finite; and 
the ordinary periods of succession, whereby we measure time and duration, 
as hours, days, and years, are bounded lengths. The difficulty is, how 
we come by those boundless ideas of eternity and immensity, since the ob- 
jects we converse with come so much short of any approach or proportion 
to that largeness. 

Sect. 3. How we come by the idea of infinity. — Every one that has any 
idea of any stated lengths of space, as a foot, finds that he can repeat that 
idea ; and, joining it to the former, make the idea of two feet ; and by the ad- 
dition of a third, three feet; and so on, without ever coming to an end of 
his addition, whether of the same idea of a foot, or if he pleases of doubling 
it, or any other idea he has of any length, as a mile, or diameter of the earth, 
or of the orbus magnus ; for whichsoever of these he takes, and how often 
soever he doubles, or any otherwise multiplies it, he finds that after 
he has continued this doubling in his thoughts, and enlarged his idea as much 
as he pleases, he has no more reason to stop, nor is one jot nearer the end 
of such addition, than he was at first setting out. The power of enlarging 
his idea of space by farther additions, remaining still the same, he hence 
takes the idea of infinite space. 

Sect. 4. Our idea of space boundless. — This, I think, is the way where- 
by tne mind gets the idea of infinite space. It is a quite different considera 
S 



138 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

tion to examine whether the mind has the idea of such a boundless space 
actually existing, since our ideas are not always proofs of the existence of 
things ; but yet, since this comes here in our way, I suppose I may say, 
that we are apt to think that space in itself is actually boundless : to which 
imagination, the idea of space or expansion of itself naturally leads us. For 
it being considered by us either as the extension of body, or as existing by 
itself, without any solid matter, taking it up (for of such a void space we 
have not only the idea, but I have proved, as I think, from the motion of 
body, its necessary existence), it is impossible the mind should be ever 
able to find or suppose any end of it, or be stopped any where in its pro-, 
gress in this space, how far soever it extends its thoughts. Any bounds 
made with body, even adamantine walls, are so far from putting a stop to 
the mind in its farther progress in space and extension, that it rather fa- 
cilitates and enlarges it; for so far as that body reaches, so far no one can 
doubt of extension : and when we are come to the utmost extremity of 
body, what is there that can there put a stop and satisfy the mind that it 
is at the end of space, when it perceives that it is not ; nay, when it is 
satisfied that body itself can move into it? For if it be necessary 
for the motion of body, that there should be an empty space, though ever 
so little, here among bodies; and if it be possible for body to move in or 
through that empty space (nay, it is impossible for any particle of matter 
to move but into an empty space,) the same possibility of a body's moving 
into a void space, beyond the utmost bounds of body, as well as into a void 
space interspersed among bodies, will always remain clear and evident : 
the idea of empty pure space, whether within or beyond the confines of 
all bodies, being exactly the same, differing not in nature, though in bulk ; 
and there being nothing to hinder body from moving into it. So that 
wherever the mind places itself by any thought, either among or remote 
from all bodies, it can in this uniform idea of space nowhere find any bounds, 
any end ; and so must necessarily conclude it, by the very nature and idea 
of each part of it, to be actually infinite. 

Sect. 5. And so of duration. — As by the power we find in ourselves of 
repeating, as often as we will, any idea of space, we get the idea of 
immensity, so, by being able to repeat the idea of any length of duration 
we have in our minds, with all the endless addition of number, we come 
by the idea of eternity. For we find in ourselves, we can no more come 
to an end of such repeated ideas, than we can come to the end of number, 
which every one perceives he cannot. But here again it is another ques- 
tion, quite different from our having an idea of eternity; to know wheth- 
er there were any real being, whose duration has been eternal. And as 
to this, I say, he that considers something now existing, must necessarily 
come to something eternal. But having spoke of this in another place, I 
shall here say no more of it, but proceed on to some other considerations 
of our idea of infinity. 

Sect. 6. Why other ideas are not capable of infinity. — If it be so, that 
our idea of infinity be got from the power we observe in ourselves of re- 
peating without end our own ideas ; it may be demanded, " why we do not 
attribute infinite to other ideas, as well as those of space and duration; " 
since they may be as easily and as often repeated in our minds as the other ; 
and yet nobody ever thinks of infinite sweetness, or infinite whiteness, 
though he can repeat the idea of sweet or white as frequently as those of a 
yard, or a day 1 To which I answer, all the ideas that are considered as 
having parts, and are capable of increase by the addition of any equal or 
less parts, afford us by their repetition the idea of infinity ; because with 
this endless repetition there is continued an enlargement, of which there 
can be no end. But in other ideas it is not so : for to the largest idea of 
extension or duration that I at present have, the addition of any the least 
part makes an increase; but to the perfectest idea I have of the whitest 



Ch. 17. INFINITY. 139 

whiteness, if I add another of a less or equal whiteness (and of a whiter 
than I have I cannot add the idea,) it makes no increase, and enlarges not 
my idea at all ; and therefore the different ideas of whiteness, &c. are called 
degrees. For those ideas that consist of parts are capable of being aug- 
mented by every addition of the least part ; but if you take the idea of 
white, which one parcel of snow yielded yesterday to your sight, and another 
idea of white from another parcel of snow you see to-day, and put them to- 
gether in your mind, they embody, as it were, and run into one, and the 
idea of whiteness is not at all increased ; and if we add a less degree of 
whiteness to a greater, we are so far from increasing that we diminish it. 
Those ideas that consist not of parts cannot be augmented to what pro- 
portion men please, or be stretched beyond what they have received by 
their senses, but space, duration, and number, being capable of increase 
by repetition, leave in the mind an idea of endless room for more : nor can 
w r e conceive any where a stop to a farther addition or progression, and so 
those ideas alone lead our minds towards the thought of infinity. 

Sect. 7. Difference between infinity of space, and space infinite. — 
Though our idea of infinity arise from the contemplation of quantity, and 
the endless increase the mind is able to make in quantity, by the repeated 
additions of what portions thereof it pleases ; yet I guess we cause great 
confusion in our thoughts, when we join infinity to any supposed idea of 
quantity the mind can be thought to have, and so discourse or reason about 
an infinite quantity, viz. an infinite space, or an infinite duration. For 
our idea of infinity being, as I think, an endless growing idea; but the 
idea of any quantity the mind has, being at that time terminated in that 
idea (for be it as great as it will, it can be no greater than it is,) to join infinity 
to it, is to adjust a standing measure to a growing bulk ; and therefore I 
think it is not an insignificant subtlety, if I say that we are carefully to 
distinguish between the idea of the infinity of space, and the idea of a space 
infinite : the first is nothing but a supposed endless progression of the 
mind, over what repeated ideas of space it pleases ; but to have actually 
in the mind the idea of a space infinite, is to suppose the mind already 
passed over, and actually to have a view of all those repeated ideas of space, 
which an endless repetition can never totally represent to it ; which carries 
in it a plain contradiction. 

Sect. 8. We have no idea of infinite space. — This, perhaps, will be a 
little plainer, if we consider it in numbers. The infinity of numbers, to 
the end of whose addition every one perceives there is no approach, easily 
appears to any one that reflects on it ; but how clear soever this idea of 
the infinity of number be, there is nothing yet more evident, than the ab- 
surdity of the actual idea of an infinite number. Whatsoever positive ideas 
we have in our minds of any space, duration, or number, let them be ever 
so great, they are still finite ; but when we suppose an inexhaustible re- 
mainder, from which we remove all bounds, and wherein we allow the 
mind an endless progression of thought, without ever completing the 
idea, there we have our idea of infinity ; which, though it seems to be pretty 
clear when we consider nothing else in it but the negation of an end, yet 
when we would frame in our minds the idea of an infinite space or duration, 
that idea is very obscure and confused, because it is made up of two parts, 
very different, if not inconsistent. For let a man frame in his mind an idea 
of any space or number as great as he will, it is plain the mind rests and 
terminates in that idea, which is contrary to the idea of infinity, which 
consists in a supposed endless progression. And therefore I think it is, that 
we are so easily confounded, when we come to argue and reason about infinite 
space or duration, &c. : because the parts of such an idea not being per- 
ceived to be, as they are, inconsistent, the one side or the other always 
perplexes, whatever consequences we draw from the other ; as an idea of 
motion not passing on would perplex any one, who should argue from 



140 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

such an idea, which is not better than an idea of motion at rest : and such 
another seems to me to be the idea of a space, or (which is the same thing) 
a number infinite, i. e. of a space or number which the mind actually has, 
and so views and terminates in; and of a space or number which in a constant 
and endless enlarging and progression, it can in thought never attain to. 
For how large soever an idea of space I have in my mind, it is no larger 
than it is that instant that I have it, though I be capable the next instant 
to double it, and so on in infinitum : for that alone is infinite which has no 
bounds ; and that the idea of infinity, in which our thoughts can find none. 

Sect. 9. Number affords us the clearest idea of infinity. — But of all 
other ideas, it is number, as I have said, which, I think, furnishes us with 
the clearest and most distinct idea of infinity we are capable of. For even 
in space and duration, when the mind pursues the idea of infinity, it there 
makes use of the ideas and repetitions of numbers, as of millions and mil- 
lions of miles, or years, which are so many distinct ideas, kept best by 
number from running into a confused heap, wherein the mind loses itself; 
and when it has added together as many millions, &c. as it pleases, of 
known lengths of space or duration, the clearest idea it can get of infinity 
is the confused incomprehensible remainder of endless addible numbers which 
affords no prospect of stop or boundary. 

Sect. 10. Our different conception of the infinity of number, duration, 
and expansion. — It will, perhaps, give us a little farther light into the idea 
we have of infinity, and discover to us that it is nothing but the infinity of 
number applied to determinate parts, of which we have in our minds the 
distinct ideas, if we consider that number is not generally thought by us 
infinite, whereas duration and extension are apt to be so ; which arises 
from hence, that in number we are at one end as it were : for there being 
in number nothing less than a unit, we there stop, and are at an end ; but 
in addition or increase of number, we can set no bounds. And so it is 
like a line, whereof one end terminating with us, the other is extended 
still forward beyond all that we can conceive ; but in space and duration it 
is otherwise. For in duration we consider it, as if this line of number 
were extended both ways, to an unconceivable, undeterminate, and infinite 
length: which is evident to any one that will but reflect on what considera- 
tion he hath of eternity; which, I suppose, he will find to be nothing else 
but the turning this infinity of number both ways a parte ante and a parte 
post, as they speak. For when we would consider eternity, a parte ante, 
what do we but, beginning from ourselves and the present time we are in, 
repeat in our minds the idea of years, or ages, or any other assignable 
portion of duration past, with a prospect of proceeding in such addition with 
all the the infinity of number? and when we would consider eternity, a parte 
foste, we just after the same rate begin from ourselves, and reckon by mul- 
tiplied periods yet to come, still extending that line of number, as before. 
And these two being put together, are that infinite duration we call eternity ; 
which, as we turn our view either way, forward or backward, appears in- 
finite, because we still turn that way the infinite end of number, i. e. the 
power still of adding more. 

Sect. 11. The same happens also in space, wherein conceiving ourselves 
to be as it were in the centre, we do on all sides pursue those indetermina- 
ble lines of number : and reckoning any way from ourselves, a yard, mile, 
diameter of the earth, or orbis magnus, by the infinity of number, we add 
others to them as often as we will ; and having no more reason to set bounds 
to those repeated ideas than we ' have to set bounds to number, we have 
that indeterminable idea of immensity. 

Sect. 12. Infinite divisibility. — And since in any bulk of matter our 
thoughts can never arrive at the utmost'divisibility, therefore there is an ap- 
parent infinity to us also in that, Which has the infinity also of number ; but 
with this difference, that, in the former considerations of the infinity of 



Ck 17. INFINITY. Ill 

space and duration, we only use addition of numbers; whereas this is like 
the division of an unit into its fractions, wherein the mind also can proceed 
in infinitum, as well as in the former additions ; it being indeed but the ad- 
dition still of new numbers: though in the addition of the one we can have 
no more the positive idea of a space infinitely great, than, in the division 
of the other, we can have the idea of a body infinitely little; our idea of 
infinity being, as I may say, a growing or fugitive idea, still in a boundless 
progression, that can stop nowhere. 

Sect. 13. No positive idea of infinity. — Though it be hard, I think, to 
find any one so absurd as to say he has the positive idea of an actual infinite 
number ; the infinity whereof lies only in a power still of adding any combi- 
nation of units to any former number, and that as long and as much as 
one will ; the like also being in the infinity of space and duration, which 
power leaves always to the mind room for endless additions ; yet there be 
those who imagine they have positive ideas of infinite duration and space. 
It would, I think, be enough to destroy any such positive idea of infinite, to 
ask him that has it, whether he could add to it or no ; which would easily 
show the mistake of such a positive idea. We can, I think, have no posi- 
tive idea of any space or duration which is not made up of, and commensurate 
to, repeated numbers of feet or yards, or days and years, which are the com- 
mon measures, whereof we have the ideas in our minds, and whereby we 
judge of the greatness of this sort of quantities. And therefore, since an 
infinite idea of space or duration must needs be made up of infinite parts, it 
can have no other infinity than that of number, capable still of farther addi- 
tion ; but not an actual positive idea of a number infinite. For, I think, 
it is evident that the addition of finite things together (as are all lengths, 
whereof we have the positive ideas) can never otherwise produce the idea 
of infinite, than as number does ; which, consisting of additions of infinite 
units one to another, suggests the idea of infinite, only by a power we find 
we have of still increasing the sum, and adding more of the same kind, 
without coming one jot nearer the end of such progression. 

Sect. 14. They who would prove their idea of infinite to be positive, 
seem to me to do it by a pleasant argument, taken from the negation of an 
end; which being negative, the negation of it is positive. He that consi- 
ders that the end is, in body, but the extremity or superficies of that body, 
will not perhaps be forward to grant that the end is a bare negative : and 
he that perceives the end of his pen is black or white, will be apt to think 
that the end is something more than a pure negation. Nor is it, when ap- 
plied to duration, the bare negation of existence, but more properly the 
last moment of it. But if they will have the end to be nothing but the bare 
negation of existence, I am sure they cannot deny but the beginning is the 
first instant of being, and is not by any body conceived to be a bare nega- 
tion: and, therefore, by their own argument, the idea of eternal, a parte 
ante, or of a duration without a beginning, is but a negative idea. 

Sect. 15. What is positive, what negative, in our idea of infinite. — The 
idea of infinite has, I confess, something of positive in all those things we 
apply to it. When we would think of infinite space or duration, we at 
first step usually make some very large idea, as perhaps of millions of ages, 
or miles, which possibly we double and multiply several times. All that 
we thus amass together in our thoughts, is positive, and the assemblage of 
a great number of positive ideas of space or duration. But what still re- 
mains beyond this, we have no more a positive distinct notion of, than a 
mariner has of the depth of the sea; where, having let down a large portion 
of his sounding-line, he reaches no bottom: whereby he knows the depth 
to be so many fathoms and more ; but how much that more is he hath no 
distinct notion at all : and could he always supply new line, and find the 
plummet always sink, without ever stopping, he would be something in the 
posture of the mind reaching after a complete and positive idea of infinity. 



142 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

Tn which case let this line be ten, or ten thousand fathoms long, it equally 
discovers what is beyond it ; and gives only this confused and comparative 
idea, that this is not all, but one may yet go farther. So much as the mind 
comprehends of any space, it has a positive idea of; but in endeavouring to 
make it infinite, it being always enlarging, always advancing, the idea is 
still imperfect and incomplete. So much space as the mind takes a view 
of in its contemplation of greatness, is a clear picture, and positive in the 
understanding: but infinite is still greater. 1. Then the idea of so much 
is positive and clear. 2. The idea of greater is also clear, but it is but a 
comparative idea, viz. the idea of so much greater as cannot be compre- 
hended ; and is plainly negative, not positive. For he has no positive clear 
idea of the largeness of any extension (which is that sought for in the idea 
of infinite,) that has not a comprehensive idea of the dimensions of it ; and 
such nobody, I think, pretends to in what is infinite. For to say a man 
has a positive clear idea of any quantity, without knowing how great it is, 
is as reasonable as to say, he has the positive clear idea of the number of 
the sands on the sea-shore, who knows not how many there be, but only 
that they are more than twenty. For just such a perfect and positive idea has 
he of an infinite space or duration, who says it is larger than the extent or 
duration often, one hundred, one thousand, or any other number of miles, 
or years, whereof he has, or can have, a positive idea ; which is all the 
idea, I think, we have of infinite. So that what lies beyond our positive . 
idea towards infinity, lies in obscurity ;• and has the indeterminate confu- 
sion of a negative idea, wherein I know I neither do nor can comprehend 
all I would, it being too large for a finite and narrow capacity: and that 
cannot but be very far from a positive complete idea, wherein the greatest 
part of what I would comprehend is left out, under the undeterminate in- 
timation of being still greater : for to say, that having in any quantity 
measured so much, or gone so far, you are not yet at the end, is only to 
say, that that quantity is greater. So that the negation of an end, in any 
quantity is, in other words, only, to say that it is bigger : and a total negation 
of an end is but carrying this bigger still with you, in all the progressions 
your thoughts shall make in quantity, and adding this idea of still greater 
to all the ideas you have, or can be supposed to have, of quantity. Now, 
whether such an idea as that be positive, I leave any one to consider. 

Sect. 18. We have no positive idea of an infinite duration. — I ask those 
who say they have a positive idea of eternity, whether their idea of duration 
includes in it succession, or not? If it does not, they ought to show the 
difference of their notion of duration, when applied to an eternal being and 
to a finite ; since perhaps, there may be others, as well as I, who will own 
to them their weakness of understanding in this point; and acknowledge 
that the notion they have of duration forces them to conceive, that what- 
ever has duration, is of a longer continuance to-day than it was yesterday. 
If, to avoid succession in external existence they recur to the punctum 
stans of the schools, I suppose they will thereby very little mend the matter, 
or help us to a more clear and positive idea of infinite duration, there being 
nothing more inconceivable to me than duration without succession. Be- 
sides, that punctum stans, if it signify any thing, being wow quantum, finite 
or infinite, cannot belong to it. But if our weak apprehensions cannot 
separate succession from any duration whatsoever, our idea of eternity can 
be nothing but of infinite succession of moments of duration, wherein any 
thing does exist; and whether any one has, or can have a positive idea of 
an actual infinite number, I leave him to consider, till his infinite number 
be so great that he himself can add no more to it ; and as long as he can 
increase it, I doubt he himself will think the idea he hath of it a little too 
scanty for positive infinity. 

Sect. 17. I think it unavoidable for every considering rational creature, 
that will but examine his own or any other existence, to have the notion 



Ch. 17. INFINITY. 143 

of an eternal wise Being, who had no beginning ; and such an idea of infi- 
Viite duration I am sure I have. But this negation of a beginning being but 
the negation of a positive thing, scarce gives me a positive idea of infinity ; 
which, whenever I endeavour to extend my thoughts to, I confess myself 
at a loss, and I find I cannot attain any clear comprehension of it. 

Sect. 18. No positive idea of infinite space. — He that thinks he has a 
positive idea of infinite space, will, when he considers it, find that he can 
no more have a positive idea of the greatest, than he has of the least space. 
For in this latter, which seems the easier of the two, and more within our 
comprehension, we are capable only of a comparative idea of smallness, 
which will always be less than any one whereof we have the positive idea. 
All our positive ideas of any quantity, whether great or little, have always 
bounds ; though our comparative idea, whereby we can always add to the 
one and take from the other, hath no bounds ; for that which remains either 
great or little, not being comprehended in that positive idea which we have, 
lies in obscurity; and we have no other idea of it, but of the power of en- 
larging the one, and diminishing the other, without ceasing. A pestle and 
mortar will as soon bring any particle of matter to indivisibility as the 
acutest thought of a mathematician ; and a surveyor may as soon with his 
chain measure out infinite space as a philosopher by the quickest flight of 
mind reach it, or by thinking comprehend it ; which is to have a positive 
idea of it. He that thinks on a cube of an inch diameter, has a clear and 
positive idea of it in his mind, and so can frame one of a half, a quarter, 
and an eighth, and so on till he has the idea in his thoughts of something 
very little ; but yet reaches not the idea of incomprehensible littleness which 
division can produce. What remains of smallness is as far from his thoughts 
as when he first began; and therefore he never comes at all to have a clear 
and positive idea of that smallness which is consequent to infinite divisibility. 

Sect. 19. What is positive, what negative, in our idea of infinite. — 
Every one that looks towards infinity does, as I have said, at first glance 
make some very large idea of that which he applies it to, let it be space or 
duration ; and possibly he wearies his thoughts, by multiplying in his mind 
that first large idea : but yet by that he comes no nearer to the having a 
positive clear idea of what remains to make up a positive infinite, than the 
country-fellow had of the water, which was yet to come and pass the chan- 
nel of the river where he stood : 

Rusticus cxpectat dum transeat amnis, at ille 
Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis sevum. 

Sect. 20. Some think they have a positive idea of eternity, and not of 
infinite space. — There are some I have met with, that put so much difference 
between infinite duration and infinite space, that they persuade themselves 
that they have a positive idea of eternity ; but that they have not, nor can 
have, any idea of infinite space. The reason of which mistake I suppose to 
be this, that finding by a due contemplation of causes and effects, that it is 
necessary to admit some eternal being, and so to consider the real existence 
of that being, as taken up and commensurate to their idea of eternity ; but, 
on the other side, not finding it necessary, but, on the contrary, apparently 
absurd, that body should be infinite ; they forwardly conclude, that they 
have no id^a of infinite space, because they can have no idea of infinite 
matter. Which consequence, I conceive, is very ill collected; because 
the existence of matter is noways necessary to the existence of space, no 
more than the existence of motion, or the sun, is necessary to duration, 
though duration use to be measured by it: and I doubt not but that a man 
may have the idea often thousand miles square, without any body so big, 
as well as the idea of ten thousand years, without any body so old. It 
seems as easy to me to have the idea of space empty of body, as to 



144 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

think of the capacity of a bushel without corn, or the hollow of a nut- 
shell without a kernel in it: it being no more necessary that there should 
be existing a solid body infinitely extended, because we have an idea of 
the infinity of space, than it is necessary that the world should be eter- 
nal, because we have an idea of infinite duration. And why should we 
think our idea of infinite space requires the real existence of matter 
to support it, when we find that we have as clear an idea of an infinite 
duration to come, as we have of infinite duration past? Though, I 
-•uppose, nobody thinks it conceivable, that any thing does or has existed 
in that future duration. Nor is it possible to join our idea of future dura- 
tion with present or past existence, any more than it is possible to make 
the ideas of yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow to be the same ; or bring ages 
jast and future together, and make them contemporary. But if these 
nen are of the mind, that they have clearer ideas of infinite duration than 
of infinite space, because it is past doubt that God has existed from all 
eternity, but there is no real matter coextended with infinite space ; yet 
those philosophers who are of opinion that infinite space is possessed by 
God's infinite omnipresence, as well as infinite duration by his eternal ex- 
istence, must be allowed to have as clear an idea of infinite space as of in- 
finite duration ; though neither of them, I think, has any positive idea of in- 
finity in either case. For whatsoever idea a man has in his mind of any 
quantity, he can repeat it, and add it to the former as easily as he can add 
together the ideas of two days, or two paces, which are positive ideas of 
lengths he has in his mind, and so on as long as he pleases ; whereby if a 
man had a positive idea of infinite, either duration or space, he could add 
two infinites together ; nay, make one infinite infinitely bigger than another : 
absurdities too gross to be confuted. 

Sect. 21. Supposed positive ideas of infinity, cause of mistakes. — But yet, 
if after all this, there being men who persuade themselves that they have 
clear positive comprehensive ideas of infinity, it is fit they enjoy their 
privilege : and I should be very glad (with some others that I know, who 
acknowledge they have none such) to be better informed by their commu- 
nication. For I have been hitherto apt to think that the great and inex- 
tricable difficulties which perpetually involve all discourses concerning 
infinity, whether of space, duration, or divisibility, have been the certain 
marks of a defect in our ideas of infinity, and the disproportion the nature 
thereof has to the comprehension of our narrow capacities. For whilst 
men talk and dispute of infinite space or duration, as if they had as com- 
plete and positive ideas of them as they have of the names they use for 
them, or as they have of a yard, or an hour, or any other determinate 
quantity; it is no wonder if the incomprehensible nature of the thing they 
discourse of, or reason about, leads them into perplexities and contradic- 
tions ; and their minds be overlaid by an object too large and mighty to 
be surveyed and managed by them. 

Sect. 22. All these ideas from sensation and reflection. — If I have 
dwelt pretty long on the consideration of duration, space, and number, and 
what arises from the contemplation of them, infinity ; it is possibly no more 
than the matter requires ; there being few simple ideas whose modes give 
more exercise to the thoughts of men than these do. I pretend not to 
treat of them in their full latitude; it suffices to my design to show how 
the mind receives them, such as they are, from sensation and reflection ; 
and how even the idea we have of infinity, how remote soever it may seem 
to be from any object of sense or operation of our mind, has nevertheless, 
as all our other ideas, its original there. Some mathematicians perhaps, 
of advanced speculations, may have other ways to introduce into their 
minds ideas of infinity ; but this hinders not, but that they themselves, as 
well as all other men, got the first ideas which they had of infinity from 
sensation and reflection, in the method we have here set down. 



3k 18. OF OTHER SIMPLE MODES. 145 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

OF OTHER SIMPLE MODES. 

Sect. 1. Modes of motion. — Though I have in the foregoing chapters 
shown how from simple ideas, taken in by sensation, the mind comes to extend 
itself even to infinity ; which however it may, of all others, seem most re- 
mote from any sensible perception, yet at last hath nothing in it but what 
is made out of simple ideas, received into the mind by the senses, and after- 
ward there put together by the faculty the mind has to repeat its own ideas : 
though, I say, these might be instances enough of simple modes of the sim- 
ple ideas of sensation, and suffice to show how the mind comes by them ; 
yet I shall, for method's sake, though briefly, give an account of some few 
more, and then proceed to more complex ideas. 

Sect. 2. To slide, roll, tumble, walk, creep, run, dance, leap, skip, and 
abundance of others that might be named, are words which are no sooner 
heard but every one, who understands English, has presently in his mind 
distinct ideas, which are all but the different modifications of motion. Modes 
of motion answer those of extension: swift and slow are two different ideas 
of motion, the measures whereof are made of the distances of time and space 
put together; so they are complex ideas comprehending time and space 
with motion. 

Sect. 3. Modes of sounds. — The like variety have we in sounds. Every 
articulate word is a different modification of sound : by which we see, that 
from the sense of hearing", by such modifications, the mind may be furnish- 
ed with distinct ideas to almost an infinite number. Sounds also, besides 
the distinct cries of birds and beasts, are modified by diversity of different 
notes of different length put together, which make that complex idea called 
a tune, which a musician may have in his' mind when he hears or makes 
no sound at all, by reflecting on the ideas of those sounds so put together 
silently in his own fancy. 

Sect. 4. Modes of colours. — Those of colours are also very various: some 
we take notice of as the different degrees, or, as they are termed, shades 
of the same colour. But since we very seldom make assemblages of colours 
either for use or delight, but figure is taken in also, and has its part in 
it, as in painting, weaving, needleworks, &c. those which are taken notice 
of do most commonly belong to mixed modes, as being made up of ideas 
of divers kinds, viz. figure and colour, such as beauty, rainbow, &c. 

Sect. 5. Modes of taste. — All compounded tastes and smells are also 
modes made up of the simple ideas of those senses. But they being such 
as generally we have no names for, are less taken notice of, and cannot be 
set down in writing; and therefore must be left without enumeration to the 
thoughts and experience of my reader. 

Sect. 6. Some simple modes have no names. — In general it may be ob- 
served that those simple modes which are considered but as different degrees 
of the same simple idea, though they are in themselves many of them very 
distinct ideas, yet have ordinarily no distinct names, nor are much taken 
notice of as distinct ideas, where the difference is but very small between 
them. Whether men have neglected these modes, and given no names 
to them, as wanting measures nicely to distinguish them; or because, when 
they were so distinguished, that knowledge would not be of general or neces- 
sary use, I leave it to the thoughts of others : it is sufficient to my purpose to 
dhow that all our simple ideas come to our minds only by sensation and 
reflection ; and that when the mind has them, it can variously repeat and 
T 



v46 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

compound them, and so make new complex ideas. But though white, red, 
or sweet, &c. have not been modified or made into complex ideas, by sev- 
eral combinations, so as to be named, and thereby ranked into species ; yet 
some others of the simple ideas, viz. those of unity, duration, motion, &c. 
above instanced in, as also power and thinking, have been thus modified to 
a great variety of complex ideas, with names belonging to them. 

Sect. 7. Why some modes have, and others have not, names. — The rea^ 
son whereof, I suppose, has been this ; that, the great concernment of men 
being with men one among another, the knowledge of men and their actions, 
and the signifying of them to one another, was most necessary ; and there- 
fore they made ideas of actions very nicely modified, and gave those com- 
plex ideas names, that they might the more easily record and discourse of 
those things they were daily conversant in, without long ambages and cir- 
cumlocutions ; and that the things they were continually to give and receive 
information about might be the easier and quicker understood. That this 
is so, and that men in framing difFerent complex ideas, and giving them 
names, have been much governed by the end of speech in general (which 
is a very short and expedite way of conveying their thoughts one to another,) 
is evident in the names which in several arts have been found out and ap- 
plied to several complex ideas of modified actions belonging to their several 
trades, for despatch sake, in their direction or discourses about them ; which 
ideas are not generally framed in the minds of men not conversant about 
these operations. And thence the words that stand for them, by the great- 
est part of men of the same language, are not understood : v. g. colshire, 
drilling, filtration, cohobation, are words standing for certain complex ideas, 
which being seldom in the minds of any but those few whose particular em- 
ployments do at eve.y turn suggest them to their thoughts, those names of 
them are not generally understood but by smiths and chymists ; who having 
framed the complex ideas which these words stand for, and having given 
names to them, or received them from others, upon hearing of these names 
in communication, readily conceive those ideas in their minds ; as by co- 
hobation all the simple ideas of distilling, and the pouring the liquor distilled 
from any thing back upon the remaining matter, and distilling it again. 
Thus we see that there are great varieties of simple ideas, as of tastes and 
smells, which have no names, and of modes many more; which either not hav- 
ing been generally enough observed, or else not being of any great use to be 
taken notice of in the affairs and converse of men, they have not had names 
given to them, and so pass not for species. This we shall have occasion 
hereafter to consider more at large, when we come to speak of words. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

OF THE MODES OF THINKING. 

Sect. 1. Sensation, remembrance, contemplation, <SfC. When the mind 
turns its view inwards upon itself, and contemplates its own actions, think- 
ing is the first that occurs. In it the mind observes a great variety 
of modifications, and from thence receives distinct ideas. Thus the per- 
ception which actually accompanies, and is annexed to any impression on 
the body, made by an external object, being distinct from all other modifications 
of thinking, furnishes the mind with a distinct idea, which we call sensa- 
tion ; which is, as it were, the actual entrance of any idea into the under- 
standing by the senses. The same idea, when it again recurs without the 
operation of the like object on the external sensory, is remembrance ; if it 
be sought after by the mind, and with pain and endeavour found and 



Ch. 19. OF THE MODES OF THINKING. 147 

brought again in view, it is recollection ; if it be held there long under at- 
tentive consideration, it is contemplation. When ideas float in our mind, 
without any reflection or regard of the understanding, it is that which the 
French call reverie ; our language has scarce a name for it. When the 
ideas that offer themselves (for, as 1 have observed in another place, whilst 
we are awake there will always be a train of ideas succeeding one another 
in our minds) are taken notice of, and, as it were, registered in the memo- 
ry, it is attention. When the mind, withgreat earnestness, and of choice, 
fixes its view on any idea, considers it on all sides, and will not be called 
off by the ordinary solicitation of other ideas, it is that we call intention 
or study. Sleep, without dreaming, is rest from all these: and dreaming 
itself is the having of ideas (whilst the outward senses are stopped, so 
that they receive not outward objects with their usual quickness) in the 
mind, not suggested by any external objects or known occasion, nor under 
any choice or conduct of the understanding at all. And whether that, 
which we call ecstasy, be not dreaming with the eyes open, I leave to be 
examined. 

Sect. 2. These are some few instances of those various modes of think- 
ing which the mind may observe in itself, and so have as distinct ideas of, 
as it hath of white and red, a square or a circle. I do not pretend to enu- 
merate them all, nor to treat at large of this set of ideas which are got 
from reflection : that would be to make a volume. It suflices to my present 
purpose to have shown here, by some few examples, of what sort these 
ideas are, and how the mind comes by them ; especially since I shall have 
occasion hereafter to treat more at large of reasoning, judging, volition, 
and knowledge, which are some of the most considerable operations of 
the mind and modes of thinking. 

Sect. 3. The various attention of the mind in thinking. — But perhaps 
it may not be an unpardonable digression, nor wholly impertinent to our 
present design, if we reflect here upon the different state of the mind in 
thinking, which those instances of attention, reverie, and dreaming, &c. 
before mentioned, naturally enough suggest. That there are ideas, some 
or other, always present in the mind of a waking man, every one's experi- 
ence convinces him, though the mind employs itself about them with seve- 
ral degrees of attention. Sometimes the mind fixes itself with so much 
earnestness on the contemplation of some objects, that it turns their ideas 
on all sides, remarks their relations and circumstances, and views every 
part so nicely, and with such intention, that it shuts out all other thoughts, 
and takes no notice of the ordinary impressions made then on the senses 
which at another season would produce very sensible perceptions: at 
other times it barely observes the train of ideas that succeed in the under- 
standing, without directing and pursuing any of them ; and at other times 
it let? them pass almost quite unregarded, as faint shadows that, make no 
impression. 

Sect. 4. Hence it is probable that thinking is the action, not essence of 
the soul. — This difference of intention and remission of the mind in thinking, 
with a great variety of degrees between earnest study and very near minding 
nothing at all, every one, I think, has experimented in himself. Trace it 
a little farther, and you find the mind in sleep retired as it were from the 
senses, and out of the reach of those motions made on the organs of sense, 
which at other times produce very vivid and sensible ideas. I need not 
for this, instance in those who sleep out whole stormy nights, without hear- 
ingthe thunder, or seeing the lightning, or feeling the shaking of the house, 
which are sensible enough to those who are waking : but in this retirement 
of the mind from the senses, it often retains a yet more loose and incohe- 
rent manner of thinking, which we call dreaming; and, last of all, sound 
sleep closes the scene quite, and puts an end to all appearances. This, I think, 
almost every one has experience of in himself, and his own observation with- 



148 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

out difficulty leads him thus far. That which I would farther conclude from 
hence is, that since the mind can sensibly put on, at several times, several 
degrees of thinking-, and be sometimes even in a waking man so remiss, as 
to have thoughts dim and obscure to that degree, that they are very little 
removed from none at all; and at last, in the dark retirements of sound 
sleep, loses the sight perfectly of all ideas whatsoever: since, I say, this is 
evidently so in matter of fact and constant experience, I ask whether it be 
not probable that thinking is the action, and not the essence, of the soul? since 
the operations of agents will easily admit of intention and remission, 
but the essences of things are not conceived capable of any such variation. 
But this by the by. 



CHAPTER XX. 

OF MODES OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 

Sect. 1. Pleasure and pain simple ideas. — Among the simple ideas 
which we receive both from sensation and reflection, pain and pleasure are 
two very considerable ones. For as in the body there is sensation barely in 
itself, or accompanied with pain or pleasure ; so the thought or perception 
of the mind is simply so, or else accompanied also with pleasure or pain, delight 
or trouble, call it how you please. These, like other simple ideas, cannot 
be described, nor their names defined ; the way of knowing them is, as of 
the simple ideas of the senses, only by experience. For to define them by 
the presence of good or evil, is no otherwise to make them known to us. 
than by making us reflect on what we feel in ourselves, upon the several 
and various operations of good and evil upon our minds, as they are differ- 
ently applied to or considered by us. 

Sect. 2. Good and evil, what. — Things then are good or evil only in re- 
ference to pleasure or pain. That we call good, which is apt to cause or 
increase pleasure or diminish pain in us ; or else to procure or preserve us 
the possession of any other good, or absence of any evil. And, on the 
contrary, we name that evil, which is apt to produce or increase any pain, 
or diminish any pleasure in us ; or else to procure us any evil, or deprive 
us of any good. By pleasure and pain, I must be understood to mean of 
body or mind, as they are commonly distinguished ; though, in truth, they 
be only different constitutions of the mind, sometimes occasioned by disor- 
der in the body, sometimes by thoughts of the mind. 

Sect. 3. Our passions moved by good and evil. — Pleasure and pain, and 
that which causes them, good and evil, are the hinges on which our pas- 
sions turn : and if we reflect on ourselves, and observe how these, under 
various considerations, operate in us, what modifications or tempers of 
mind, what internal sensations (if I may so call them) they produce in us, 
we may thence form to ourselves the ideas of our passions. 

Sect. 4. Love. — Thus any one reflecting upon the thought he has of the 
delight which any present or absent thing is apt to produce in him, has the 
idea we call love. For when a man declares in autumn, when he is eating 
them, or in spring, when there are none, that he loves grapes, it is no more 
but that the taste of grapes delights him : let an alteration of health or con- 
stitution destroy the delight of their taste, and he then can be said to love 
grapes no longer. 

Sect. 5. Hatred. — On the contrary, the thought of the pain which any 
thing present or absent is apt to produce in us, is what we call hatred. 
Were it my business here to inquire any farther than into the bare ideas of 
our passions, as they depend on different modifications of pleasure and pain, 
I should remark, that our love and hatred of inanimate insensible beings, 



Ch. 20. MODES OF PLEASURE AND PAIN. 149 

is commonly founded on that pleasure and pain which we receive from their 
use and application any way to our senses, though with their destruction : 
but hatred or love, to beings capable of happiness or misery, is often the 
uneasiness or delight which we find in ourselves, arising from a considera- 
tion of their very being or happiness. Thus the being and welfare of a 
man's children or friends, producing constant delight in him, he is said con- 
stantly to love them. But it suffices to note, that our ideas of love and 
hatred are but the dispositions of the mind, in respect of pleasure and pain 
in general, however caused in us. 

Sect. 6. Desire. — The uneasiness a man finds in himself upon the ab- 
sence of any thing, whose present enjoyment carries the idea of delight 
with it, is that we call desire ; which is greater or less as that uneasiness 
is more or less vehement. Where, by the by, it may perhaps be of some 
use to remark, that the chief, if not only spur to human industry and 
action, is uneasiness. For whatsoever good is proposed, if its absence 
carries no displeasure or pain with it, if a man be easy and content with- 
out it, there is no desire of it, nor endeavour after it ; there is no more but 
a bare velleity, the term used to signify the lowest degree of desire, and 
that which is next to none at all, when there is so little uneasiness in 
the absence of any thing, that it carries a man no farther than some faint 
wishes for it, without any more effectual or vigorous use of the means to 
attain it. Desire also is stopped or abated by the opinion of the impos- 
sibility or unattainableness of the good proposed, as far as the uneasiness 
is cured or allayed by that consideration. This might carry our thoughts 
farther, were it seasonable in this place. 

Sect. 7. Joy. — Joy is a delight of the mind from the consideration of the 
present or assured approaching possession of a good ; and we are then pos- 
sessed of any good when we have it so in our power that we can use it 
when we please. Thus a man almost starved has joy at the arrival of 
relief, even before he has the pleasure of using it : and a farther, in whom 
the very well-being of his children causes delight, is always, as long as 
his children are in such a state, in the possession of that good ; for he needs 
but to reflect on it to have that pleasure. 

Sect. 8. Sorrow. — Sorrow is uneasiness in the mind upon the thought 
of a good lost, which might have been enjoyed longer, or the sense of a 
present evil. 

Sect. 9. Hope. — Hope is that pleasure in the mind, which every one 
finds in himself upon the thought of a profitable future enjoyment of a thing 
which is apt to delight him. 

Sect. 10. Fear. — Fear is an uneasiness of the mind upon the thought 
of future evil likely to befall us. 

Sect. 11. Despair. — Despair is the thought of the unattainableness of 
any good, which works differently in men's minds, sometimes producing 
uneasiness or pain, sometimes rest and indolency. 

Sect. 12. Anger. — Anger is uneasiness or discomposure of the mind 
upon the receipt of any injury, with a present purpose of revenge. 

Sect. 13. Envy. — Envy is an uneasiness of the mind, caused by the 
consideration of a good we desire, obtained by one we think should not 
have had it before us. 

Sect. 14. What passions all men have. — These two last, envy and 
anger, not being caused by pain and pleasure, simply in themselves, but 
having in them some mixed considerations of ourselves and others, are not 
therefore to be found in all men, because those other parts of valuing their 
merits, or intending revenge, are wanting in them : but all the rest termina- 
ting purely in pain and pleasure, are, I think, to be found in all men. For 
vve love, desire, rejoice, and hope, only in respect of pleasure ; we hate, 
fear, and grieve, only in respect of pain ultimately : in fine, all these pas- 
sions are moved by things, only as they appear to be the causes of pleasure 



150 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

and pain, or to have pleasure or pain some way or other annexed to them. 
Thus we extend our hatred usually to the subject (at least if a sensible 
or voluntary agent) which has produced pain in us, because the fear ic 
leaves is a constant pain : but we do not so constantly love what has done 
us good; because pleasure operates not so strongly on us as pain, and because 
we are not so ready to have hope it will do so again. But this by the by 

Sect. 15. Pleasure and pain, what. — By pleasure and pain, delight and un- 
easiness, I must all along be understood (as I have above intimated) to 
mean, not only bodily pain and pleasure, but whatsoever delight or uneasi- 
ness is felt by us, whether arising from any grateful or unacceptable sen- 
sation or reflection. 

Sect. 16. It is farther to be considered, that in reference to the passions, 
the removal or lessening of a pain is considered and operates as a plea- 
sure ; and the loss or diminishing of a pleasure as a pain. 

Sect. 17. Shame. The passions, too, have most of them in most per- 
sons operations on the body, and cause various changes in it; which not 
being always sensible, do not make a necessary part of the idea of each 
passion. For shame, which is an uneasiness of the mind upon the thought 
of having done something which is indecent, or will lessen the valued esteem 
vvhich others have for us, has not always blushing accompanying it. 

Sect. 18. These instances to show how our ideas of the passions are got 
from sensation and reflection. — I would not be mistaken here, as if I 
meant this as a discourse of the passions; they are many more than those 
I have here named ; and those I have taken notice of would each of them 
require a much larger and more accurate discourse. I have only mentioned 
these here as so many instances of modes of pleasure and pain resulting in our 
minds from various considerations of good and evil. I might perhaps have 
instanced in other modes of pleasure and pain more simple than these, as 
the pain of hunger and thirst, and the pleasure of eating and drinking to re- 
move them: the pain of tender eyes, and the pleasure of music; pain from 
captious uninstructive wrangling, and the pleasure of rational conversation 
with a friend, or of well-directed study in the search and discovery of truth. 
But the passions being of much more concernment to us, I rather made 
choice to instance in them, and show how the ideas we have of them are 
derived from sensation and reflection. 



CHAPTER XXL 

OF POWER. 

Sect. 1. This idea how got. — The mind being every day informed, by 
the senses, of the alteration of those simple ideas it observes in things with- 
out, and taking notice how one comes to an end, and ceases to be, and 
another begins to exist which was not before: reflecting also on what 
passes within itself, and observing a constant change of its ideas, some- 
times by the impression of outward objects on the senses, and sometimes 
by the determination of its own choice; and concluding from what it has so 
constantly observed to have been, that the like changes will for the future be 
made in the same things by like agents, and by the like ways ; considers 
in one thing the possibility of having any of its simple ideas changed, and 
in another the possibility of making that change ; and so comes by that idea 
which we call power. Thus we say fire has a power to melt gold, i. e. to 
destroy the consistency of its insensible parts, and consequently its hard- 
ness, and make it fluid; and gold has a power to be melted; that the sun 
has a power to blanch wax, and wax a power to be blanched by the sun, 
whereby the yellowness is destroyed, and whiteness made to exist in its 



Ch. 21. OF POWER. 151 

room. In which and the like cases, the power we consider is in reference 
to the change of perceivable ideas; for we cannot observe any alteration to 
be made in, or operation upon, any thing, but by the observable change of 
its sensible ideas; nor conceive any alteration to be made, but by conceiv- 
ing a change of some of its ideas. 

Sect. 2. Power active and passive. — Power, thus considered, is twofold, 
viz. as able to make, or able to receive, any change ; the one may be called 
active, and the other passive power. Whether matter be not wholly des- 
titute of active power, as its author, God, is truly above all passive power, 
and whether the intermediate state of created spirits be not that alone which 
is capable of both active and passive power, may be worth consideration. 
I shall not now enter into that inquiry ; my present business being not to 
search into the original of power, but how we come by the idea of it. But 
since active powers make so great a part of our complex ideas of natural 
substances (as we shall see hereafter,) and I mention them as such, accord- 
ing to common apprehension ; yet they being not perhaps so truly active 
powers, as our hasty thoughts are apt to represent them, I judge it not 
amiss, by this intimation, to direct our minds to the consideration of God 
and spirits, for the clearest idea of active powers. 

Sect. 3. Power includes relation. — I confess power includes in it some 
kind of relation (a relation to action or change,) as indeed which of our 
ideas, of what kind soever, when attentively considered, does not? For 
cur ideas of extension, duration, and number, do they not all contain in 
them a secret relation of the parts'? Figure and motion have something 
relative in them much more visibly : and sensible qualities, as colours and 
smells, &c. what are they but the powers of different bodies, in relation to 
our perception ? &c. And if considered in the things themselves, do they 
not depend on the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of the parts? all which in- 
clude some kind of relation in them. Our idea, therefore, of power, I think, 
may well have a place among other simple ideas, and be considered as one 
of them, being one of those that make a principal ingredient in our complex 
ideas of substances, as we shall hereafter have occasion to observe. 

Sect. 4. The clearest idea of active power had from spirit. — We are 
abundantly furnished with the idea of passive power by almost all sorts of 
sensible things. In most of them we cannot avoid observing their sensi- 
ble qualities, nay, their very substances, to be in a continual flux : and there- 
fore with reason we look on them as liable still to the same change. Nor 
have we of active power (which is the more proper signification of the 
word power) fewer instances : since whatever change is observed, the mind 
must collect a power somewhere able to make that change, as well as a 
possibility in the thing itself to receive it. But yet, if we will consider 
it attentively, bodies, by our senses, do not afford us so clear and distinct 
an idea of active power as we have from reflection on the operations of 
our minds. For all power relating to action, — and there being but two 
sorts of action whereof we have any idea, viz. thinking and motion, — let 
us consider whence we have the clearest ideas of the powers which produce 
these actions. 1. Of thinking, body affords us no idea at all: it is only frcm 
reflection that we have that. 2. Neither have we from body any idea of the 
beginning of motion. A body at rest affords us no idea of any active power 
to move ; and when it is set in motion itself, that motion is rather a passion 
than an action in it. For when the ball obeys the stroke of a billiard-stick, 
it is not any action of the ball, but bare passion : also, when by impulse it 
sets another ball in motion that lay in its way, it v only communicates thn 
motion it had received from another, and loses in itself so much as the other 
received : which gives us but a very obscure idea of an active power of 
moving in body, whilst we observe it only to tranfer, but not produce, any 
motion. For it is but a very obscure idea of power, which reaches not 
the production of the action, but the continuation of the passion. For so 



152 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

is motion in a body impelled by another; the continuation of the alteration 
made in it from rest to motion being little more an action than the continua- 
tion of the alteration of its figure by the same blow, is an action. The idea 
of the beginning of motion we have only from reflection on what passes 
in ourselves, where we find by experience, that barely by willing it, barely 
oy a thought of the mind, we can move the parts of our bodies which were 
before at rest. So that it seems to me, we have, from the observation of 
the operation of bodies by our senses, but a very imperfect obscure idea of 
active power, since they afford us not any idea in themselves of the power 
to begin any action, either motion or thought. But if, from the impulse 
bodies are observed to make one upon another, any one thinks he has a 
clear idea of power, it serves as well to my purpose, sensation being one 
of those ways whereby the mind comes by its ideas : only I thought it worth 
while to consider here, by the way, whether the mind doth not receive its 
idea of active power clearer from reflection on its own operations than it 
doth from any external sensation. 

Sect. 5. Will and understanding two powers. — This at least I think 
evident, that we find in ourselves a power to begin or forbear, continue or end 
several actions of our minds, and motions of our bodies, barely by a thought 
or preference of the mind ordering, or, as it were, commanding the doing 
or not doing such or such a particular action. This power which the mind 
has thus to order the consideration of any idea, or the forbearing to consi- 
der it: or to prefer the motion of any part of the body to its rest, and vice 
versa, in any particular instance: is that which we call the will. The actual 
exercise of that power, by directing any particular action, or its forbearance, 
is that which we call volition or willing. The forbearance of that action, 
consequent to such order or command of the mind, is called voluntary. 
And whatsoever action is performed without such a thought of the mind, is 
called involuntary. The power of perception is that which we call the un- 
derstanding. Perception, which we make the act of the understanding, is 
of three sorts : 1. The perception of ideas in our minds. 2. The percep- 
tion of the signification of signs. 3. The perception of the connexion or 
repugnancy, agreement or disagreement, that there is between any of our 
ideas. All these are attributed to the understanding, or perceptive power, 
though it be the two latter only that use allows us to say we understand. 

Sect. 6. Faculty. — These powers of the mind, viz. of perceiving, and 
of preferring, are usually called by another name : and the ordinary way of 
speaking is, that the understanding and will are two faculties of the mind; 
a word proper enough, if it be used as all words should be, so as not to 
breed any confusion in men's thoughts, by being supposed (as I suspect 
it has been) to stand for some real beings in the soul, that performed those 
actions of understanding and volition. For when we say the will is the 
commanding and superior faculty of the soul ; that it is, or is not free ; that it 
determines the inferior faculties ; that it follows the dictates of the under- 
standing, &c. ; though these, and the like expressions, by those that care- 
fully attend to their own ideas, and conduct their thoughts more by the 
evidence of things than the sound of words, may be understood in a clear 
and distinct sense ; yet I suspect, I say, that this way of speaking of facul- 
ties has misled many into a confused notion of so many distinct agents in 
us, which had their several provinces and authorities, and did command, 
obey, and perform several actions, as so many distinct beings : which has 
been no small occasion of wrangling, obscurity, and uncertainty in ques- 
tions relating to them. 

Sect. 7. Whence the ideas of liberty and necessity. — Every one, I think, 
finds in himself a power to begin or forbear, continue or put an end to seve- 
ral actions in himself. From the consideration of the extent of this power 
of the mind over the actions of the man, which every one finds in himself 
arise the ideas of liberty and necessity. 



Ch. 21. OF POWER. 153 

Sect. 8. Liberty, what. — All the actions that we have any idea of re- 
ducing themselves, as has been said, to these two, viz. thinking and motion ; 
so far as a man has power to think, or not to think, to move, or not to 
move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind : so far is 
a man free. Wherever any performance or forbearance are not equally 
in a man's power ; wherever doing or not doing will equally follow upon 
the preference of his mind directing it ; there he is not free, though per- 
haps the action may be voluntary. So that the idea of liberty is the idea 
of a power in any agent to do or forbear any particular action, according 
to the determination or thought of the mind, whereby either of them is pre- 
ferred to the other : where either of them is not in the power of the 
agent to be produced by him, according to his volition, there he is not at 
liberty ; that agent is under necessity. So that liberty cannot be where 
there is no thought, no volition, no will ; but there may be thought, there 
may be will, there may be volition, where there is no liberty. A little 
consideration of an obvious instance or two may make this clear. 

Sect. 9. Supposes the understanding and will. — A tennis-ball, whether 
in motion by the stroke of a racket, or lying still at rest, is not by any one 
taken to be a free agent. If we inquire into the reason, we shall find it is 
because we conceive not a tennis-ball to think, and consequently not to 
have any volition, or preference of motion to rest, or vice versa; and there- 
fore has not liberty, is not a free agent ; but all its both motion and rest 
come under our idea of necessary, and are so called. Likewise, a man 
falling into the water, (a bridge breaking under him) has not herein liberty, 
is not a free agent. For though he has volition, though he prefers his not 
falling to falling, yet the forbearance of that motion not being in his power, 
the stop or cessation of that motion follows not upon his volition ; and 
therefore therein he is not free. So a man striking himself or his friend, 
by a convulsive motion of his arm, which it is not in his power, by volition, 
or the direction of his mind, to stop, or forbear, nobody thinks he has in 
this liberty ; every one pities him, as acting by necessity and constraint. 

Sect. 10. Belongs not to volition. — Again, suppose a man be carried, 
while fast asleep, into a room, where is a person he longs to see and speak 
with, and be there locked fast in, beyond his power to get out, he awakes, 
and is glad to find himself in so desirable company, which he stays willing- 
ly in, i. e. prefers his stay to going away; I ask, is not this stay voluntary 1 
1 think nobody will doubt it ; and yet, being locked fast in, it is evident he 
is not at liberty not to stay, he has not freedom to be gone. So that lib- 
erty is not an idea belonging to volition, or preferring ; but to the person 
having the power of doing, or forbearing to do, according as the mind shall 
choose or direct. Our idea of liberty reaches as far as that power, and no 
farther. For wherever restraint comes to check that power, or compulsion 
takes away that indifferency of ability on either side to act, or to forbear ac- 
ting, there liberty, and our notion of it, presently ceases. 

Sect. 11. Voluntary opposed to involuntary, not to necessary. — We 
have instances enough, and often more than enough, in our own bodies. 
A man's heart beats, and the blood circulates, which it is not in his power, 
by any thought or volition to stop ; and therefore in respect to these mo- 
tions, where rest depends not on his choice, nor would follow the determina- 
tion of his mind, if it should prefer it, he is not a free agent. Convulsive 
motions agitate his legs, so that, though he wills it ever so much, he can- 
not, by any power of his mind, stop their motion, (as in that odd disease 
called Chorea Sancti viti,) but he is perpetually dancing: he is not at 
liberty in this action, but under as much necessity of moving as a stone 
that falls, or a tennis-ball struck with a racket. On the other side, a palsy 
or the stocks hinder his legs from obeying the determination of his mind, 
if it would thereby transfer his body to another place. In all these there 
is want of freedom ; though the sitting still even of a paralytic, whilst he 
U 



154 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

prefers it to a removal, is truly voluntary. Voluntary then is not opposed to 
necessary, but to involuntary. For a man may prefer what he can do to what 
he cannot do ; the state he is in to its absence or change, though necessity 
has made it in itself unalterable. 

Sect. 12. Liberty, what. — As it is in the motions of the body, so it is 
in the thoughts of our minds : where any one is such that we have power 
to take it up, or lay it by, according to the preference of the mind, there 
we are at liberty. A waking man being under the necessity of having some 
ideas constantly in his mind, is not at liberty to think or not to think, no 
more than he is at liberty, whether his body shall touch any other or no ; 
but whether he will remove his contemplation from one idea to another is 
many times in his choice ; and then he is, in respect of his ideas, as much 
at liberty as he is in respect of bodies he rests on : he can at pleasure re- 
move himself from one to another. But yet some ideas to the mind, like 
some motions to the body, are such as in certain circumstances it cannot 
avoid, nor obtain their absence by the utmost effort it can use. A man on 
the rack is not at liberty to lay by the idea of pain, and divert himself with 
other contemplations: and sometimes a boisterous passion hurries our 
thoughts, as a hurricane does our bodies, without leaving us the liberty of 
thinking on other things, which we would rather choose. But as soon as 
the mind regains the power to stop or continue, begin or forbear, any of these 
motions of the body without, or thoughts within, according as it thinks fit to 
prefer either to the other, we then consider the man as a free agent again. 
Sect. 13. Necessity, what. — Wherever thought is wholly wanting, or 
the power to act or forbear according to the direction of thought ; there 
necessity takes place. This in an agent capable of volition, when the be- 
ginning or continuation of any action is contrary to that preference of his mind, 
is called compulsion ; when the hindering or stopping any action is con- 
trary to his volition, it is called restraint. Agents that have no thought, 
no volition at all, are in every thing necessary agents. 

Sect. 14. Liberty belongs not to the will. — If this be so (as I imagine 
it is) I leave it to be considered whether it may not help to put an end to 
that long agitated, and I think unreasonable, because unintelligible, ques- 
tion, viz. whether man's will be free or no 1 For, if I mistake not, it 
follows, from what I have said, that the question itself is altogether improper ; 
and it is as insignificant to ask, whether man's will be free, as to ask whether 
his sleep be swift, or his virtue square ; liberty being as little applicable 
to the will 'as swiftness of motion is to sleep, or squareness to virtue. 
Every one would laugh at the absurdity of such a question as either of these ; 
because it is obvious that the modifications of motion belong not to sleep, nor 
the difference of figure to virtue ; and when any one well considers it, I think 
he will as plainly perceive that liberty, which is but a power, belongs only to 
agents, and cannot be an attribute or modification of the will, which is also 
but a power. 

Sect. 15. Volition. — Such is the difficulty of explaining and giving 
clear notions of internal actions, by sounds, that I must here warn my 
reader that ordering, directing, choosing, preferring, &c. which I have made 
use of, will not distinctly enough express volition, unless he will reflect on 
what he himself does when he wills. For example, preferring, which seems 
perhaps best to express the act of volition, does it not precisely. For 
though a man would prefer flying to walking, yet who can say he ever 
wills it! Volition, it is plain, is an act of the mind knowingly exerting 
that dominion it takes itself to have over any part of the man, by employ- 
ing it in, or witholding it from, any particular action. And what is the 
will, but the faculty to do this 1 And is that faculty any thing more in 
effect than power, the power of the mind to determine its thoughts, to 
the producing, continuing, or stopping any action, as far as it depends on 
us 1 For can it be denied, that whatever agent has a power to think on 



Ch. 21. OF POWER. 155 

its own actions, and to prefer their doing or omission, either to other, has 
that faculty called will] Will then is nothing but such a power. Liberty, 
on the other side, is the power -a man has to do or forbear doing any par- 
ticular action, according as its doing or forbearance has the actual preference 
in the mind ; which is the same thing as to say, according as he himself 
wills it. 

Sect. 16. Powers belonging to agents. — It is plain, then, that the will 
is nothing but one power or ability, and freedom another power or ability ; 
so that to ask, whether the will has freedom, is to ask whether one power 
has another power, one ability another ability] a question at first sight too 
grossly absurd to make a dispute, or need an answer. For who is it that 
sees not that powers belong only to agents, and are attributes only of sub- 
stances, and not of powers themselves 1 So that this way of putting the 
question, viz. whether the will be free? is in effect to ask, whether 
the will be a substance, an agent? or at least to suppose it, since freedom 
can properly be attributed to nothing else. If freedom can with any pro- 
priety of speech be applied to power, it may be attributed to the power 
that is in a man to produce or forbear producing motion in parts of his 
body, by choice or preference ; which is that which denominates him free, 
and is freedom itself. But if any one should ask whether freedom were free, 
he would be suspected not to understand well what he said ; and he would 
be thought to deserve Midas's ears, who, knowing that rich was a denomi- 
nation for the possession of riches, should demand whether riches themselves 
were rich. 

Sect. 17. However, the name faculty, which men have given to this 
power called the will, and whereby they have been led into away of talking 
of the will as acting, may, by an appropriation that disguises its true sense, 
serve a little to palliate the absurdity ; yet the will in truth signifies nothing 
but a power, or ability, to prefer or choose : and when the will, under the 
name of a faculty, is considered, as it is, barely as an ability to do some- 
thing, the absurdity in saying it is free, or not free, will easily discover 
itself. For if it be reasonable to suppose and talk of faculties as distinct 
beings that can act (as we do, when we say the will orders, and the will 
is free,) it is fit that we should make a speaking faculty, and a walking 
faculty, and a dancing faculty, by which those actions are produced which 
are but several modes of motion ; as well as we make the will and under- 
standing to be faculties, by which the actions of choosing and perceiving 
are produced, which are but several modes of thinking ; and, we may as 
properly say, that it is the singing faculty sings, and the dancing faculty 
dances ; as that the will chooses, or that the understanding conceives ; or 
as is usual, that the will directs the understanding, or the understanding 
obeys or obeys not the will : it being altogether as proper and intelligible 
to say, that the power of speaking directs the power of singing, or the 
power of singing obeys or disobeys the power of speaking. 

Sect. 18. This way of talking, nevertheless, has prevailed, and, as I 
guess, produced great confusion. For these being all different powers in 
the mind, or in the man, to do several actions, he exerts them as he thinks 
fit: but the power to do one action is not operated on by the power of 
doing another action. For the power of thinking operates not on the 
power of choosing, nor the power of choosing on the power of thinking; 
no more than the power of dancing operates on the power of singing, or 
the power of singing on the power of dancing ; as any one, who reflects 
on it, will easily perceive : and yet this is it which we say, when we thus 
speak, that the will operates on the understanding, or the understanding on the 
will. 

Sect. 19. I grant, that this or that actual thought may be the occasion 
of volition, or exercising the power a man has to choose ; or the actual 
choice of the mind, the cause of actual thinking on this or that thing : 



156 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

as the actual singing of such a tune may be the cause of dancing such a 
dance ; and the actual dancing of such a dance, the occasion of singing such 
a tune. But in all these it is not one power that operates on another ; but 
it is the mind that operates, and exerts these powers ; it is the man that 
does the action ; it is the agent that has power, or is able to do. For pow- 
ers are relations, not agents: and that which has the power or not the 
power to operate, is that alone which is or is not free, and not the power 
Itself. For freedom, or not freedom, can belong to nothing but what has 
or has not a power to act. 

Sect. 20. Liberty belongs not to the will. — The attributing to faculties 
that which belonged not to them, has given occasion to this way of talking: 
but the introducing into discourses concerning the mind, with the name 
of faculties, a notion of their operating, has, I suppose, as little advanced 
our knowledge in that part of ourselves, as the great use and mention of 
the like invention of faculties, in the operations of the body, has helped 
us in the knowledge of physic. Not that I deny there are faculties, both in 
the body and mind : they both of them have their powers of operating, else 
neither the one nor the other could operate. For nothing can operate that 
is not able to operate ; and that is not able to operate that has no power to 
operate. Nor do I deny, that those words, and the like, are to have their 
place in the common use of languages, that have made them current. It 
looks like too much affectation wholly to lay them by: and philosophy itself, 
though it likes not a gaudy dress, yet when it appears in public, must have 
so much complacency as to be clothed in the ordinary fashion and language 
of the country, so far as it can consist with truth and perspicuity. But the 
fault has been, that faculties have been spoken of and represented as so many 
distinct agents. For it being asked, what it was that digested the meat in 
our stomachs 1 it was a ready and very satisfactory answer, to say, that 
it was the digestive faculty. What was it that made any thing come out 
of the body 1 the expulsive faculty. What moved 1 the motive faculty. 
And so in the mind the intellectual faculty, or the understanding, understood; 
and the elective faculty, or the will, willed or commanded. This is, in 
short, to say, that the ability to digest, digested ; and the ability to move, 
moved; and the ability to understand, understood. For faculty, ability, 
and power, I think, are but different names of the same things : which 
ways of speaking, when put into more intelligible words, will, I think, 
amount to this much; that digestion is performed by something that is 
able to digest, motion by something able to move, and understanding by 
something able to understand. And in truth it would be very strange if 
it should be otherwise ; as strange as it would be for a man to be free 
without being able to be free. 

Sect. 21. But to the agent or man. — To return then to the inquiry 
about liberty, I think the question is not proper, whether the will be free, 
but whether a man be free. Thus, I think, 

1. That so far as any one can, by the direction or choice of his mind, 
preferring the existence of any action to the nonexistence of that action, 
and vice versa, make it to exist, or not exist ; so far he is free. For if 1 
can, by a thought directing the motion of my finger, make it move when 
it was at rest, or vice versa, it is evident, that in respect of that I am free : 
and if I can, by a like thought of my mind, preferring one to the other, 
produce either words or silence, I am at liberty to speak or hold my peace ; 
and as far as this power reaches, of acting, or not acting, by the determi 
nation of his own thoughts preferring either, so far a man is free. For how 
can we think any one freer than to have the power to do what he will 1 And 
so far as any one can, by preferring any action to its not being, or rest to any 
action, produce that action or rest, so far can he do what he will. For 
such a preferring of action to its absence is the willing of it ; and we can 
scarce tell how to imagine any being freer than to be able to do what he 



Ch. 21. OF POWER. 157 

wills. So that in respect of actions within the reach of such a power in 
him, a man seems as free as it is possible for freedom to make him. 

Sect. 22. In respect of willing a man is not free. — But the inquisitive 
mind of man, willing to shift off from himself, as far he can, all thoughts of 
guilt, though it be by putting himself into a worse state than that of fatal neces- 
sity, is not content with this : freedom, unless it reaches farther than this, 
will not serve the turn : and it passes for a good plea, that a man is not 
free at all, if he be not as free to will as he is to act what he wills. Con- 
cerning a man's liberty, there yet therefore is raised this farther question, 
whether a man be free to will ? which I think is what is meant, when it 
is disputed whether the will be free. And as to that I imagine, 

Sect. 23. — 2. That willing, or volition, being an action, and freedom con- 
sisting in a power of acting or not acting, a man in respect of willing, or 
the act of volition, when any action in his power is once proposed to his 
thoughts as presently to be done, cannot be free. The reason whereof is 
very manifest : for it being unavoidable that the action depending on his 
will should exist or not exist ; and its existence or not existence, following 
perfectly the determination and preference of his will ; he cannot avoid 
willing the existence or not existence of that action ; it is absolutely neces- 
sary that he will the one or the other ; i. e. prefer the one to the other : 
since one of them must necessarily follow : and that which does follow, 
follows by the choice and determination of his mind, that is, by his willing 
it : for if he did not will it, it would not be. So that in respect of the act 
of willing, a man in such a case is not free : liberty consisting in a power 
to act, or not to act ; which in regard of volition, a man, upon such a pro- 
posal, has not. For it is unavoidably necessary to prefer the doing or for- 
bearance of an action in a man's power, which is once so proposed to his 
thoughts ; a man must necessarily will the one or the other of them, upon 
which preference or volition the action o r its forbearance certainly follows, and 
is truly voluntary. But the act of volition, or preferring one of the two, being 
that which he cannot avoid, a man in respect of that act of willing is under 
a necessity, and so cannot be free ; unless necessity and freedom can con- 
sist together, and a man can be free and bound at once. 

Sect. 24. This then is evident, that in all proposals of present action, 
a man is not at liberty to will or not to will, because he cannot forbear will- 
ing : liberty consisting in a power to act or to forbear acting, and in that 
only. For a man that sits still is said yet to be at liberty, because he can 
walk if he wills it. But if a man sitting still has not a power to remove him- 
self, he is not at liberty ; so likewise a man falling down a precipice, though 
in motion, is not at liberty, because he cannot stop that motion if he would. 
This being so, it is plain that a man that is walking, to whom it is proposed 
to give off walking, is not at liberty whether he will determine himself to walk, 
or give off walking, or no : he must necessarily prefer one or the other of 
them, walking or not walking ; and so it is in regard of all other actions in 
our power so proposed, which are the far greater number. For consider- 
ing the vast number of voluntary actions that succeed one another every 
moment that we are awake in the course of our lives, there are but few of 
them that are thought on, or proposed to the will till the time they are to be 
done; and in all such actions, as I have shown, the mind, in respect of wil- 
ing, has not a power to act, or not to act, wherein consist liberty. The mind 
in that case has not a power to forbear willing; it cannot avoid some deter- 
mination concerning them, let the consideration be as short, the thought 
as quick, as it will ; it either leaves the man in the state he was before 
thinking, or changes it ; continues the action, or puts an end to it. Where- 
by it is manifest, that it orders and directs one, in preference to or with 
neglect of the other, and thereby either the continuation or change be- 
comes una T oidably voluntary. 



153 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

Sect. 25. The will determined by something without it. — Since then it 
is plain, that in most cases a man is not at liberty, whether he will will or 
no ; the next thing- demanded, is, whether a man be at liberty to will which 
of the two he pleases, motion or rest] This question carries the absurdity 
of it so manifestly in itself, that one might thereby sufficiently be convinced 
that liberty concerns not the will. For to ask, whether a man be at liberty 
to will either motion or rest, speaking or silence, which he pleases, is to 
ask, whether a man can will what he wills, or be pleased with what he is 
pleased with? A question which, I think, needs no answer; and they who 
can make a question of it, must suppose one will to determine the acts of 
another, and another to determine that ; and so on in infinitum. 

Sect. 26. To avoid these and the like absurdities, nothing can be of 
greater use, than to establish in our minds determined ideas of the things 
under consideration. If the ideas of liberty and volition were well fixed 
in our understandings, and carried along with us in our minds, as they 
ought, through all the questions that are raised about them, I suppose a 
great part of the difficulties that perplex men's thoughts, and entangle their 
understandings, would be much easier resolved, and we should perceive 
where the confused signification of terms, or where the nature of the thing 
caused the obscurity. 

Sect. 27. Freedom. — First, then, it is carefully to be remembered, that 
freedom consists in the dependence of the existence, or not existence of 
any action, upon our volition of it ; and not in the dependence of any action, 
or its contrary, on our preference. A man standing on a cliff is at liberty 
to leap twenty yards downward into the sea, not because he has a power 
to do the contrary action, which is to leap twenty yards upwards, for that 
he cannot do ; but he is therefore free, because he had a power to leap or 
not to leap. But if a greater force than his either holds him fast or tumbles 
him down, he is no longer free in that case ; because the doing or forbear- 
ance of that particular action is no longer in his power. He that is a close 
prisoner in a room twenty feet square, being at the north side of his cham- 
ber, is at liberty to walk twenty feet southward, because he can walk or 
not walk it ; but is not, at the same time, at liberty to do the contrary, i, e. 
.o walk twenty feet northward. 

In this then consists freedom, viz. in our being able to act or not to act, 
according as we shall choose or will. 

Sect. 28. Volition, what. — Secondly, we must remember, that volition 
or willing is an act of the mind directing its thought to the production of 
any action, and thereby exerting its power to produce it. To avoid multi- 
plying of words, I would crave leave here, under the word action, to com- 
prehend the forbearance too of any action proposed ; sitting still, or holding 
one's peace, when walking or speaking are proposed, though mere forbear- 
ances, requiring as much the determination of the will, and being as often 
weighty in their consequences as the contrary actions, may, on that con- 
sideration, well enough pass for actions too : but this I say, that I may not 
be mistaken, if for brevity sake I speak thus. 

Sect. 29. What determines the will. — Thirdly, the will being no- 
thing put a power in the mind to direct the operative faculties of a man to 
motion or rest, as far as they depend on such direction ; to the question, 
what is it determines the will? the true and proper answer is, the mind. 
For that which determines the general power of directing to this or that par- 
ticular direction, is nothing but the agent itself exercising the power it has 
that particular way. If this answer satisfies not, it is plain the meaning 
of the question, what determines the will ? is this, what moves the mind, 
in every particular instance, to determine its general power of directing to 
this or that particular motion or rest? And to this I answer, the motive 
for continuing in the same state or action, is only the present satisfaction 



Ch. 21. OF POWER. 159 

in it; the motive to change is always some uneasiness: nothing setting us 
"upon the change of state, or upon any new action, but some uneasiness. 
Tnis is the great motive that works on the mind to put it upon action, which 
for shortness sake we will call determining of the will ; which I shall more at 
large explain. 

Sect. 30. Will and desire must not be confounded. — But in the way to 
it, it will be necessary to premise, that though I have above endeavoured to 
express the act of volition by choosing, preferring, and the like terms, that 
signify desire as well as volition, for want of other words to mark that ac- 
tion' of the mind, whose proper name is willing or volition ; yet it being a 
very simple act, whosoever desires to understand what it is, will better find 
it by reflecting on his own mind, and observing what it does when it wills, 
than by any variety of articulate sounds whatsoever. This caution of being 
careful not to be misled by expressions that do not enough keep up the dif- 
ference between the will and several acts of the mind that are quite distinct 
from it, I think the more necessary ; because I find the will often confounded 
with several of the affections, especially desire, and one put for the other; 
and that Dy men who would not willingly be thought not to. have had very 
distinct notions of things, and not to have writ very clearly about them. 
This, I imagine, has been no small occasion of obscurity and mistake in this 
matter; and therefore is, as much as may be, to be avoided. For he that 
shall turn his thoughts inwards upon what passes in his mind when he wills, 
shall see that the will or power of volition is conversant about nothing but 
that particular determination of the mind, whereby barely by a thought the 
mind endeavours to give rise, continuation, or stop, to any action which it 
takes to be in its power. This, well considered, plainly shows that the 
will is perfectly distinguished from desire ; which in the very same action 
may have a quite contrary tendency from that which our will sets us upon. 
A man whom I cannot deny, may oblige me to use persuasions to another, 
which, at the same time I am speaking, I may wish may not prevail on 
him. In this case, it is plain the will and desire run counter. I will the 
action that tends one way, whilst my desire tends another, and that the di- 
rect contrary way. A man who by a violent fit of the gout in his limbs finds 
a doziness in his head, or a want of appetite in his stomach removed, de- 
sires to be eased too of the pain of his feet or hands (for wherever there is 
pain there is a desire to be rid of it) though yet, whilst he apprehends that 
the removal of the pain may translate the noxious humour to a more vital 
part, his will is never determined to any one action that may serve to re- 
move this pain. Whence it is evident that desiring and willing are two 
distinct acts of the mind ; and consequently that the will, which is but the 
power of volition, is much more distinct from desire. 

Sect. 31. Uneasiness determines the will. — To return then to the in- 
quiry, what is it that determines the will in regard to our actions 1 And 
that, upon second thoughts, I am apt to imagine is not, as is gene- 
rally supposed, the greater good in view, but some (and for the most part 
the most pressing) uneasiness a man is at present under. This is that 
which successively determines the will, and sets us upon those actions we 
perform. This uneasiness we may call, as it is, desire ; which is an un- 
easiness of the mind for the want of some absent good. All pain of the 
body, of what sort soever, and disquiet of the mind, is uneasiness : and 
with this is always joined desire, equal to the pain or uneasiness felt, and 
is scarce distinguishable from it. For desire being nothing but an uneasi- 
ness in the want of an absent good, in reference to any pain felt, ease is 
that absent good ; and till that ease be attained, we may call it desire, no- 
body feeling pain that he wishes not to be eased of, with a desire equal 
to that pain, and inseparable from it. Besides this desire of ease from pain 
there is another of absent positive good; and here also the desire and un- 
easiness are equal. As much as we desire any absent good, so much are 



160 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

we in pain for it. But here all absent good does not, according to the 
greatness it has, or is acknowledged to have, cause pain equal to that 
greatness ; as all pain causes desire equal to itself: because the absence of 
good is not alway a pain, as the presence of pain is. And therefore absent 
good may be looked on and considered without desire; but so much as there 
is any where of desire, so much there is of uneasiness. 

Sect. 32. Desire is uneasiness. — That desire is a state of uneasiness, 
wery one who reflects on himself will quickly find. Who is there that 
;as not felt in desire what the wise man says of hope (which is not much 
different from it,) that " it being deferred, makes the heart sick"?" and that 
still proportionable to the greatness of the desire ; which sometimes raises 
L .he uneasiness to that pitch, that it makes people cry out, give me children, 
nve me the thing desired, or I die ! Life itself, and all its enjoyments, is a 
mrdenthat cannot be borne under the lasting and unremoved pressure of such 
in uneasiness. 

Sect. 33. The uneasiness of desire determines the will. — Good and 
evil, present and absent, it is true, work upon the mind : but that which 
immediately determines the will, from time to time, to every voluntary 
action, is the uneasiness of desire, fixed on some absent good : either 
negative, as indolence to one in pain ; or positive, as enjoyment of pleasure. 
That it is this uneasiness that determines the will to the sucessive volun- 
tary actions, whereof the greatest part of our lives is made up, and by 
which we are conducted through different courses to different ends, I 
shall endeavour to show, both from experience and the reason of the 
thing. 

Sect. 34. This is the spring of action. — When a man is perfectly con- 
tent with the state he is in, which is, when he is perfectly without any 
uneasiness, what industry, what action, what will is there left, but to con- 
tinue in it? of this every man's observation will satisfy him. And thus we 
see our All-wise Maker, suitably to our constitution and frame, and know- 
ing what it is that determines the will, has put into man the uneasiness of 
hunger and thirst, and other natural desires, that return at their seasons 
to move and determine their wills, for the preservation of themselves, and 
the continuation of their species. For I think we may conclude, that if 
the bare contemplation of these good ends, to which we are carried by 
these several uneasinesses, had been sufficient to determine the will, and 
set us on work, we should have had none of these natural pains, and per- 
haps in this world little or no pain at all. " It is better to marry than to 
burn," says St Paul ; where we may see what it is that chiefly drives men 
into the enjoyments of conjugal life. A little burning felt pushes us more 
powerfully than greater pleasures in prospect draw or allure. 

Sect. 35. The greatest positive good determines not the will, but un~ 
easiness. — It seems so established and settled a maxim by the general con- 
sent of all mankind, that good, the greater good, determines the will, that I 
do not at all wonder, that when I first published my thoughts on this sub- 
ject, I took it for granted ; and I imagine that by a great many I shall be 
thought more excusable for having then done so, than that now I have 
ventured to recede from so received an opinion. But yet, upon a stricter 
inquiry, I am forced to conclude, that good, the greater good, though ap- 
prehended, and acknowledged to be so, does not determine the will, until 
our desire, raised proportionably to it, makes us uneasy in the want of it. 
Convince a man ever so much that plenty has its advantages over poverty ; 
make him see and own, that the handsome conveniences of life are better 
than nasty penury ; yet as long as he is content with the latter, and finds 
no uneasiness in it, he moves not ; his will never is determined to any ac- 
tion that shall bring him out of it. Let a man be ever so well persuaded 
of the advantages of virtue, that it is as necessary to a man who has any 
great aims in this world, or hopes in the next, as food to life ; yet, till he 



Ch.21. OF POWER. 161 

nungers and thirsts after righteousness, till he feels an uneasiness in the 
want of it, his will will not be determined to any action in pursuit of this 
confessed greater good; but any other uneasiness he feels in himself shall 
take place, and carry his will to other actions. On the other side, let a 
drunkard see that his health decays, his estate wastes ; discredit and dis- 
eases, and the want of all things, even of his beloved drink, attends him 
in the course he follows ; yet the returns of uneasiness to miss his com- 
panions, the habitual thirst after his cups at the usual time, drives him to 
the tavern, though he has in his view the loss of health and plenty, and 
perhaps of the joys of another life : the least of which is no inconsiderable 
good, but such as he confesses is far greater than the tickling of his palate 
with a glass of wine, or the idle chat of a soaking club. It is not want 
of viewing the greater good ; for he sees and acknowledges it, and, in the 
intervals of his drinking hours, will take resolutions to pursue the greater 
good ; but when the uneasiness to miss his accustomed delight returns, the 
greater acknowledged good loses its hold, and the present uneasiness de- 
termines the will to the accustomed action ; which thereby gets stronger 
footing to prevail against the next occasion, though he at the same time 
makes secret promises to himself, that he will do so no more: this is the 
last time he will act against the attainment of those greater goods. And 
thus he is from time to time in the state of that unhappy complainer, 
video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor: which sentence, allowed for true, 
and madegoodby constant experience, may this, and possibly no other way, 
be easily made intelligible. 

Sect. 36. Because the removal of uneasiness is the first step to happi- 
ness. — If we inquire into the reason of what experience makes so evident 
in fact, and examine why it is uneasiness alone operates on the will, and 
determines it in its choice : we shall find that we being capable but of one 
determination of the will to one action at once, the present uneasiness that 
we are under does naturally determine the will, in order to that happiness 
which we all aim at in all our actions ; forasmuch as whilst we are under 
any uneasiness, we cannot apprehend ourselves happy, or in the way to it : 
pain and uneasiness being, by every one, concluded and felt to be inconsist- 
ent with happiness, spoiling the relish even of those good things which we 
have ; a little pain serving to mar all the pleasure we rejoiced in. And 
therefore that which of course determines the choice of our will to the next 
action, will always be the removing of pain, as long as we have any left, 
as the first and necessary step towards happiness. 

Sect. 37. Because uneasiness alone is present. — Another reason why 
it is uneasiness alone determines the will, may be this : because that alone 
is present, and it is against the nature of things, that what is absent should 
operate where it is not. It may be said, that absent good may by contem- 
plation be brought home to the mind, and made present. The idea of it 
indeed may be in the mind, and viewed as present there ; but nothing will 
be in the mind as a present good, able to counterbalance the removal of any 
uneasiness which we are under, till it raises our desire ; and the uneasiness 
of that has prevalency in determining the will. Till then, the idea in the 
mind of whatever good, is there only, like other ideas, the object of bare 
inactive speculation, but operates not on the will, nor sets us on work ; 
the reason whereof I shall show by and by. How many are to be found, 
that have had lively representations set before their minds of the unspeak- 
able joys of heaven, which they acknowledge both possible and probable 
too, who yet would be content to take up with their happiness here ? 
And so the prevailing uneasinesses of their desires, let loose after the en- 
joyments of this life, take their turns in the determining their wills ; and 
all that while they take not one step, are not one jot moved towards the 
good things of another life, considered as ever so great. 



162 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book. 2 

Sect. 38. Because all who allow the joys of heaven possible, pursue 
them not. — Were the will determined by the views of good, as it appears 
in contemplation greater or less to the understanding, which is the state 
of all absent good, and that which in the received opinion the will is sup- 
posed to move to, and to be moved by, I do not see how it could ever get 
loose from the infinite eternal joys of heaven, once proposed and considered 
as possible. For all absent good, by which alone, barely proposed and 
coming in view, the will is thought to be determined, and so to set us on 
action, being only possible, but not infallibly certain ; it is unavoidable, 
that the infinitely greater possible good should regularly and constantly de- 
termine the will in all the successive actions it directs : and then we should 
keep constantly and steadily in our course towards heaven, without ever 
standing still, or directing our actions to any other end ; the eternal condi- 
tion of a future state infinitely outweighing the expectation of riches or 
honour, or any other worldly pleasure which we can propose to ourselves, 
though we should grant these the more probable to be obtained : for noth- 
ing future is yet in possession, and so the expectation even of these 
may deceive us. If it were so, that the greater good in view determines 
the will, so great a good once proposed could not but seize the will, and 
hold it fast to the pursuit of this infinitely greatest good, without ever let- 
ting it go again ; for the will having a power over and directing the thoughts 
as well as other actions, would, if it were so, hold the contemplation of the 
mind fixed to that good. 

But any great uneasiness is never neglected. — This would be the state 
of the mind and regular tendency of the will in all its determinations, were 
it determined by that which is considered and in view the greater good ; 
but that it is not so is visible in experience : the infinitely greatest confess- 
ed good being often neglected to satisfy the successive uneasiness of our 
desires pursuing trifles. But though the greatest aHowed, even everlast- 
ing unspeakable good, which has sometimes moved and affected the mind, 
does not steadfastly hold the will, yet we see any very great and prevail- 
ing uneasiness, having once laid hold on the will, lets it not go ; by which 
we may be convinced what it is that determines the will. Thus any ve- 
hement pain of the body, the ungovernable passion of a man violently in 
love, or the impatient desire of revenge, keeps the will steady and in- 
tent ; and the will, thus determined, never lets the understanding lay by 
the object, but all the thoughts of the mind and powers of the body are un- 
interruptedly employed that way, by the determination of the will, influ- 
enced by that topping uneasiness as long as it lasts ; whereby it seems to 
me evident, that the will or power of setting us upon one action in prefer- 
ence to all other, is determined in us by uneasiness. And whether this be 
not so, I desire every one to observe in himself. 

Sect. 39. Desire accompanies all uneasiness. — I have hitherto chiefly 
instanced in the uneasiness of desire, as that which determines the will, 
because that is the chief and most sensible, and the will seldom orders any 
action, nor is there any voluntary action performed, without some desire 
accompanying it ; which I think is the reason why the will and desire are 
so often confounded. But yet we are not to look upon the uneasiness 
which makes up, or at least accompanies, most of the other passions, as 
wholly excluded in the case. Aversion, fear, anger, envy, shame, &c. 
have each their uneasiness too, and thereby influence the will. These 
passions are scarce any of them in life and practice simple and alone, and 
wholly unmixed with others ; though usually in discourse and contemplation, 
that carries the name which operates strongest, and appears most in the 
present state of the mind: nay, there is, I think, scarce any of the passions 
to be found without desire joined with it. I am sure, wherever there is un- 
easiness, there is desire : for we constantly desire happiness ; and whatever 
we feel of uneasiness, so much it is certain we want of happiness, even in 



Ch. 21. OF POWER. 163 

our own opinion, let our state and condition otherwise be what it will. 
Besides, the present moment not being our eternity, whatever our enjoy- 
ment be, we look beyond the present and desire goes with our foresight, 
and that still carries the will with it. So that even in joy itself, that which 
keeps up the action, whereon the enjoyment depends, is the desire to con- 
tinue it, and fear to lose it : and whenever a greater uneasiness than that 
takes place in the mind, the will presently is by that determined to some 
new action, and the present delight neglected. 

Sect. 40. The most pressing uneasiness naturally determines the will. 
— But we being in this world beset with sundry uneasinesses, distracted with 
different desires, the next inquiry naturally will be, which of them has the 
precedency in determining the will to the next action 3 and to that the an- 
swer is, that ordinarily which is the most pressing of those that are judged 
capable of being then removed. For the will being the power of directing 
our operative faculties to some action, for some end, cannot at any time 
be moved towards what is judged at that time unattainable : that would be 
to suppose an intelligent being designedly to act for an end only to loose 
its labour, for so it is to act for what is judged not attainable : and there- 
fore very great uneasinesses move not the will, when they are judged not 
capable of a cure: they, in that case, put us not upon endeavours. But, 
these set apart, the most important and urgent uneasiness we at that time 
feel, is that which ordinarily determines the will successively in that train 
of voluntary actions which make up our lives. The greatest present un- 
easiness is the spur to action that is constantly felt, and for the most part 
determines the will in its choice of the next action. For this we must 
carry along with us, that the proper and only object of the will is some 
action of ours, and nothing else : for we produce nothing by our willing it but 
some action in our power, it is there the will terminates, and reaches no 
farther. 

Sect. 41. All desire happiness. — If it be farther asked what it is moves 
desire 1 I answer, happiness, and that alone. Happiness and misery are 
the names of two extremes, the utmost bounds whereof we know not ; it 
is what " eye hath not seen, ear not heard, nor hath it entered into the 
heart of man to conceive." But of some degrees of both we have very 
lively impressions, made by several instances of delight and joy on the one 
side, and torment and sorrow on the other ; which, for shortness sake, I 
shall comprehend under the names of pleasure and pain, there being plea- 
sure and pain of the mind as well as the body : " with him is fulness of 
joy, and pleasure for evermore." Or, to speak truly, they are all of the 
mind ; though some have their rise in the mind from thought, others in the 
body from certain modifications of motion. 

Sect. 42. Happiness, what. Happiness, then, in its full extent, is the 
utmost pleasure we are capable of, and misery the utmost pain : and the 
lowest degree of what can be called happiness is so much ease from all pain, 
and so much present pleasure, as without which any one cannot be content. 
Now because pleasure and pain are produced in us by the operation oi 
certain objects, either on our minds or our bodies, and in different de- 
grees, therefore what has an- aptness to produce pleasure in us is that we 
call good, and what is apt to produce pain in us we call evi], for no other 
reason but for its aptness to produce pleasure and pain in us, wherein 
consists our happiness and misery. Farther, though what is apt to pro- 
duce any degree of pleasure be in itself good, and what is apt to produce 
any degree of pain be evil, yet it often happens that we do not call it so 
when it comes in competition with a greater of its sort ; because when they 
come in competition, the degrees also of pleasure and pain have justly a 
preference. So that if we will rightly estimate what we call good and evil, 
we shall find it lies much in comparison : for the cause of every less de- 
gree of pain, as well as every greater degree of pleasure, has the nature of 
good, and vice versa. 



164 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

Sect 43. What good is desired, what not. — Though this be that which 
is called good and evil, and all good be the proper object of desire in gene- 
ral, yet all good, even seen, and confessed to be so, does not necessarily 
move every particular man's desire, but only that part, or so much of it as 
is considered and taken to make a necessary part of his happiness. All 
other good, however great in reality or appearance, excites not a man's 
desires, who looks not on it to make a part of that happiness wherewith 
he, in his present thoughts, can satisfy himself. Happiness, under this 
view, every one constantly pursues, and desires what makes any part of 
it: other things, acknowledged to be good, he can look upon without de- 
sire, pass by, and be content without. There is nobody, I think, so senseless 
as to deny that there is pleasure in knowledge : and for the pleasures of 
sense, they have too many followers to let it be questioned whether men 
are taken with them or no. Now let one man place his satisfaction in sen- 
sual pleasures, another in the delight of knowledge : though each of them 
cannot but confess there is great pleasure in what the other pursues, yet 
neither of them making the other's delight a part of his happiness, their 
desires are not moved, but each is satisfied without what the other enjoys, 
and so his will is not determined to the pursuit of it. But yet as soon as 
the studious man's hunger and thirst make him uneasy, he, whose will was 
never determined to any pursuit of good cheer, poignant sauces, delicious 
wines, by the pleasant taste he has found in them, is, by the uneasiness of 
hunger and thirst, presently determined to eating and drinking, though 
possibly with great indifferency, what wholesome food comes in his way. 
And on the other side, the epicure buckles to study when shame, or the 
desire to recommend himself to his mistress, shall make him uneasy in the 
want of any sort of knowledge. Thus, how much soever men are in ear- 
nest, and constant in pursuit of happiness, yet they may have a clear view 
of good, great and confessed good, without being concerned for it, or moved 
by it, if they think they can make up their happiness without it. Though 
as to pain, that they are always concerned for; they can feel no uneasiness 
without being moved. And therefore being uneasy in the want of 
whatever is judged necessary to their happiness, as soon as any good ap- 
pears to make a part of their portion of happiness, they begin to de- 
sire it. 

Sect. 44. Why the greatest good is not always desired. — This, I 
think, any one may observe in himself and others, that the greater visible 
good does not always raise men's desires in proportion to the greatness 
it appears and is acknowledged to have ; though every little trouble moves 
us, and sets us on work to get rid of it. The reason whereof is evident 
from the nature of our happiness and misery itself. All present pain, 
whatever it be, makes a part of our present misery : but all absent good 
does not at any time make a necessary part of our present happiness, 
nor the absence of it make a part of our misery. If it did, we should 
be constantly and infinitely miserable ; there being infinite degrees of 
happiness which are not in our possession. All uneasiness therefore being 
removed, a moderate portion of good serves at present to content men ; 
and some few degrees of pleasure, in a succession of ordinary enjojmients, 
make up a happiness wherein they can be satisfied. If this were not so, 
there could be no room for those indifferent and visible trifling actions, to 
which our wills are so often determined, and wherein we voluntarily waste 
so much of our lives ; which remissness could by no means consist with a 
constant determination of will or desire to the greatest apparent good. 
That this is so, I think few people need go far from home to be convinced. 
And indeed in this life there are not many whose happiness reaches so far as 
to afford them a constant train of moderate mean pleasures without any 
mixture of uneasiness ; and yet they could be content to stay here for ever: 
though they cann .t deny, but that it is possible there may be a state of 



Ch. 21. OF POWER. 165 

eternal durable joys after this life, far surpassing all the good that is to be 
found here. Nay, they cannot but see that it is more possible than the 
attainment and continuation of that pittance of honour, riches, or pleasure 
which they pursue, and for which they neglect that eternal state : but yet 
in full view of this difference, satisfied of the possibility of a perfect, secure 
and lasting happiness in a future state, and under a clear conviction that 
it is not to be had here, whilst they bound their happiness within some 
little enjoyment or aim of this life, and exclude the joys of heaven from 
making any necessary part of it, their desires are not moved by this great- 
er apparent good, nor their wills determined to any action or endeavour 
for its attainment. 

Sect. 45. Why not being desired, it moves not the will. — The ordi- 
nary necessities of our lives fill a great part of them with the uneasiness 
of hunger, thirst, heat, cold, weariness of labour, and sleepiness, in their 
constant returns, &c. To which if, besides accidental harms, we add the 
fantastical uneasiness (as itch after honour, power, or riches, &c.) which 
acquired habits by fashion, example, and education, have settled in us, and 
a thousand other irregular desires, which custom has made natural to us ; 
we shall find, that a very little part of our life is so vacant from these un- 
easinesses, as to leave us free to the attraction of remoter absent good. 
We are seldom at ease, and free enough from the solicitation of our natu- 
ral or adopted desires, but a constant succession of uneasinesses out of 
that stock, which natural wants or acquired habits have heaped up, take 
the will in their turns : and no sooner is one action despatched, which by 
such a determination of the will we are set upon, but another uneasiness 
is ready to set us on work. For the removing of the pains we feel, and are 
at present pressed with, being the getting out of misery, and consequently 
the first thing to be done in order to happiness, absent good, though thought 
on, confessed, and appearing to be good, not making any part of this un- 
happiness in its absence, is jostled out to make way for the removal of those 
uneasinesses we feel ; till due and repeated contemplation has brought it 
nearer to our mind, given some relish of it, and raised in us some desire : 
which then beginning to make a part of our present uneasiness, stands upon 
fair terms with the rest to be satisfied : and so, according to its greatness 
and pressure, comes in its turn to determine the will. 

Sect. 46. Due consideration raises desire. — And thus, by a due con- 
sideration, and examining any good proposed, it is in our power to 
raise our desires in a due proportion to the value of that good, whereby in 
its turn and place it may come to work upon the will and be pursued. For 
good, though appearing, and allowed ever so great, yet till it has raised 
desires in our minds, and thereby made us uneasy in its want, it reaches 
not our wills ; we are not within the sphere of its activity ; our wills being 
under the determination only of those uneasinesses which are present to 
us, which (whilst we have any) are always soliciting, and ready at hand 
to give the will its next determination ; the balancing, when there is any 
in the mind, being only which desires shall be next satisfied, which uneasi- 
ness first removed. Whereby it comes to pass, that as long as any 
uneasiness, any desire remains in our mind, there is no room for good, 
barely as such, to come at the will, or at all to determine it. Because, as 
has been said, the first step in our endeavours after happiness being to get 
wholly out of the confines of misery, and to feel no part of it, the will 
can be at leisure for nothing else, till every uneasiness we feel be perfectly 
removed ; which, in the multitude of wants and desires we are beset with 
in this imperfect state, we are not like to be ever freed from in this world. 
Sect. 47. The power to suspend the prosecution on any desire makes 
way for consideration. — There being in us a great many uneasinesses al- 
ways soliciting and ready to determine the will, it is natural, as I have 
said, that the greatest and mo?* pressing should determine the will to the 



166 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

next action ; and so it does for the most part, but not always. For the 
mind having in most cases, as is evident in experience, a power to suspend 
the execution and satisfaction of any of its disires, and so all, one after an- 
other, is at liberty to consider the objects of them, examine them on all sides, 
and weigh them with others. In this lies the liberty man has ; and from 
the not using of it right comes all that variety of mistakes, errors, and faults 
which we run into in the conduct of our lives, and our endeavours after hap- 
piness : whilst we precipitate th rt determination of our wills, and engage 
too soon before due examination. To prevent this, we have a power to sus- 
pend the prosecution of this or that desire, as every one daily may experi- 
ment in himself. This seems to me the source of all liberty; in this seems 
to consist that which is (as I think improperly) called free-will. For dur- 
ing this suspension of any desire, before the will be determined to action, 
and the action (which follows that determination) done, we have opportu- 
nity to examine, view, and judge of the good or evil of what we are going 
to do : and when, upon due examination, we have judged, we have done our 
duty, all that we can or ought to do in pursuit of our happiness ; and it is 
not a fault, but a perfection of our nature to desire, will and act according 
to the last result of a fair examination. 

Sect. 48. To be determined by our own judgment, is no restraint to 
liberty. — This is so far from being a restraint or diminution of freedom, 
that it is the very improvement and benefit of it ; it is not an abridgment, 
it is the end and use of our liberty ; and the farther we are removed from 
such a determination, the nearer we are to misery and slavery. A perfect 
indifferency in the mind, not determinable by its last judgment of the good 
or evil that is thought to attend its choice, would be so far from being an 
advantage and excellency of any intellectual nature, that it would be as 
great an imperfection as the want of indifferency to act or not to act 
till determined by the will, would be an imperfection on the other side. A 
man is at liberty to lift up his hand to his head, or let it rest quiet ; he is 
perfectly indifferent in either; and it would be an imperfection in him if 
he wanted that power, if he were deprived of that indifferency. But it 
would be as great an imperfection if he had the same indifferency whether 
he would prefer the lifting up his hand, or its remaining in rest, when it 
would save his head or eyes from a blow he sees coming: it is as much a 
perfection that desire, or the power of preferring, should be determined by 
good, as that the power of acting should be determined by the will ; and 
the more certain such determination is, the greater is the perfection. Nay, 
were we determined by any thing but the last result of our own minds, 
judging of the good or evil of any action, we were not free ; the very end 
of our freedom being, that we may attain the good we choose. And there- 
fore every man is put under a necessity by his constitution, as an intelli- 
gent being, to be determined in willing by his own thought and judgment 
what is best for him to do : else he would be under the determination ot 
some other than himself, which is want of liberty. And to deny that a 
man's will, in every determination, follows his own judgment, is to say, 
that a man wills and acts for an end that he would not have, at the time 
that he wills and acts for it. For if he prefers it in bis present thoughts 
before any other, it is plain he then thinks better of it, and would have it 
before any other; unless he can have and not have it, will and not will it, 
at the same time ; a contradiction too manifest to be admitted. 

Sect. 49. The freest agents are so determined. — If we look upon those 
superior beings above us, who enjoy perfect happiness, we shall have rea- 
son to judge that they are more steadily determined in their choice of good 
than we ; and yet we have no reason to think they are less happy or less 
free than we are. And if it were fit for such poor finite creatures as we 
are to pronounce what infinite wisdom and goodness could do, I think we 
might say, that God himself cannot choose what is not good ; the freedom 
of the Almighty hinders not his being determined by what is best. 



Ch. 21. OF POWER. 187 

Sect. 50. A constant determination to a pursuit of happiness no 
abridgment of liberty. — But to give a right view of this mistaken part of 
liberty, let me ask, "would any one be a changeling, because he is less 
determined by wise considerations than a wise man 1 Is it worth the name 
of freedom to be at liberty to play the fool and draw shame and misery up- 
on a man's self]" If to break loose from the conduct of reason, and to 
want that restraint of examination and judgment, which keeps us from 
choosing or dcing the worse, be liberty, true liberty, madmen and fools are 
the only freemen : but yet, I think, nobody would choose to be mad for the 
sake of such liberty, but he that is mad already. The constant desire of 
happiness, and the constraint it puts upon us to act for it, nobody, I think, 
accounts an abridgment of liberty, or at least an abridgment of liberty to be 
complained of. God Almighty himself is under the necessity of being hap- 
py ; and the more any intelligent being is so, the nearer is its approach to 
infinite perfection and happiness. That in this state of ignorance we short- 
sighted creatures might not mistake true felicity, we are endowed with a 
power to suspend any particular desire, and keep it from determining the 
will, and engaging us in action. This is standing still, where we are not 
sufficiently assured of the way : examination is consulting a guide. The 
determination of the will upon inquiry is following the direction of that guide : 
and he that has a power to act or not to act, according as such determina- 
tion directs, is a free agent ; such determination abridges not that power 
wherein liberty consists. He that has his chains knocked off, and the pri- 
son doors set open to him, is perfectly at liberty, because he may either 
go or stay, as he best likes : though his preference be determined to stay, by 
the darkness of the night, or illness of the weather, or want of other lodging. 
He ceases not to be free, though the desire of some convenience to be had 
there absolutely determines his preference, and makes him stay in his, prison. 

Sect. 51. The necessity of pursuing true happiness the foundation of 
liberty. — As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a 
careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness, so the care of our- 
selves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary 
foundation of our liberty. The stronger ties we have to an unalterable 
pursuit of happiness in general, which is our greatest good, and which, as 
such, our desires always follow, the more are we free from any necessary 
determination of our will to any particular action, and from a necessary 
compliance with our desire, set upon any particular and then appearing 
preferable good, till we have duly examined whether it has a tendency to, 
or be inconsistent with, our real happiness : and therefore till we are so 
much informed upon this inquiry as the weight of the matter and the nature 
of the case demands, we are, by the necessity of preferring and pursuing 
true happiness as our greatest good, obliged to suspend the satisfaction of 
our desires in particular cases. 

Sect. 52. The reason of it. — This is the hinge on which turns the liberty 
of intellectual beings, in their constant endeavours after, and a steady pro- 
secution of true felicity, that they can suspend this prosecution in particu- 
lar cases, till they had looked before them, and informed themselves whether 
that particular thing, which is then proposed or desired, lie in the way to 
their main end, and make a real part of that which is their greatest good ; 
for the inclination and tendency of their nature to happiness is an obliga- 
tion and motive to them to take care not to mistake or miss it : and so ne- 
cessarily puts them upon caution, deliberation, and wariness, in the direc- 
ition of their particular actions, which are the means to obtain it. What- 
ever necessity determines to the pursuit of real bliss, the same necessity 
with the same force establishes suspense, deliberation, and scrutiny of eacn 
successive desire, whether the satisfaction of it does not interfere with our 
true happiness, and mislead us from it. This, as seems to me, is the 
great privilege of finite intellectual beings ; and I desire it may be well con- 



168 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

sidered, whether the great inlet and exercise of all the liberty men have, 
are capable of, or can be useful to them, and that whereon depends the turn 
of their actions, does not lie in this, that they can suspend their desires, 
and stop them from determining their wills to any action, till they have 
duly and fairly examined the good and evil of it, as far forth as the weight 
of the thing requires. This we are able to do; and when we have done it, 
we have done our duty, and all that is in our power, and indeed all tha* 
needs. For since the will supposes knowledge to guide its choice, all 
that we can do is to hold our wills undetermined till we have examined 
the good and evil of what we desire, what follows after that, follows in a 
chain of consequences linked one to another, all depending on the last de- 
termination of the judgment ; which, whether it shall be upon a hasty and 
precipitate view, or upon a due and mature examination, is in our power : 
experience showing us, that in most cases we are able to suspend the pre- 
sent satisfaction of any desire. 

Sect. 53. Government of our passions the right improvement of liberty. 
— But if any extreme disturbance (as sometimes it happens) possesses our 
whole mind, as when the pain of the rack, an impetuous uneasiness, as of 
love, anger, or any other violent passion, running away with us, allows us 
not the liberty of thought, and we are not masters enough of our own minds 
to consider thoroughly and examine fairly ; God, who knows our frailty, 
pities our weakness, and requires of us no more than we are able to do, and 
sees what was and what was not in our power, will judge as a kind and 
merciful father. But the forbearance of a too hasty compliance with our 
desires, the moderation and restraint of our passions, so that our under, 
standings may be free to examine, and reason unbiassed gives its judgment, 
being that whereon a right direction of our conduct to true happiness de- 
pends ; it is in this we should employ our chief care and endeavours. In 
this we should take pains to suit the relish of our minds to the true intrinsic 
good or ill that is in things, and not permit an allowed or supposed possi- 
ble great and weighty good to slip out of our thoughts, without leaving any 
relish, any desire of itself there, till, by a due consideration of its true worth, 
we have formed appetites in our minds suitable to it, and made ourselves 
uneasy in the want of it, or in the fear of losing it. And how much this 
is in every one's power, by making resolutions to himself such as he may 
keep, is easy for every one to try. Nor let any one say he cannot govern 
his passions, nor hinder them from breaking out, and carrying him into ac- 
tion ; for what he can do before a prince, or a great man, he can do alone, 
or in the presence of God, if he will. 

Sect. 54. How men come to pursue different courses. — From what has 
been said, it is easy to give an account how it comes to pass, that though 
all men desire happiness, yet their wills carry them so contrarily, and yet 
consequently some of them do what is evil. And to this 1 say, that the va- 
rious and contrary choices that men make in the world do not argue that 
they do not all pursue good : but that the same thing is not good to every 
man alike. This variety of pursuits shows that every one does not place his 
happiness in the same thing, or choose the same way to it. Were all 
the concerns of man terminated in this life, why one followed study and 
knowledge, and another hawking and hunting; why one chose luxury and 
debauchery, and another sobriety and riches, would not be, because every one 
of these did not aim at his own happiness, but because their happiness was 
placed in different things. And therefore it was a right answer of the phy- 
sician to his patient that had sore eyes: if you have more pleasure in the taste 
of wine than in the use of your sight, wine is good for you ; but if the pleasure 
of seeing be greater to you than that of drinking, wine is naught. 

Sect. 55. The mind has a different relish, as well as the palate; and you 
will as fruitlessly endeavour to delight all men with riches or glory (which 
yet some men place their happiness in) as you would to savisfy all men's 



Ch. 21. OF POWER. 169 

hunger with cheese or lobsters : which though very agreeable and delicious 
fare to some, are to others extremely nauseous and offensive : and many 
people would with reason prefer the griping of an hungry belly to those dishes 
which are a feast to others. Hence it was, I think, that the philosophers 
of old did in vain inquire, whether summum bonum consisted in riches, or 
bodily delights, or virtue, or contemplation : and they might have as rea- 
sonably disputed whether the best relish were to be found in apples, plums, 
or nuts, and have divided themselves into sects upon it. For as pleasant 
tastes depend not on the things themselves, but their agreeableness to this 
or that particular palate, wherein there is great variety ; so the greatest 
happiness consists in the having those things which produce the greatest 
pleasure, and in the absence of those which cause any disturbance, any 
pain. Now these, to different men, are very different things. If therefore 
men in this life only have hope, if in this life they can only enjoy, it is not 
strange nor unreasonable that they should seek their happiness by avoid- 
ing all things that disease them here, and by pursuing all that delight them ; 
wherein it will be no wonder to find variety and difference. For if there 
be no prospect beyond the grave, the inference is certainly right, " let us 
eat and drink, " let us enjoy what we delight in, " for to-morrow we shall 
die." This, I think, may serve to show us the reason why, though all 
men's desires tend to happiness, yet they are not moved by the same ob- 
ject. Men may choose different things, and yet all choose right ; suppos- 
ing them only like a company of poor insects, whereof some are bees, de- 
lighted with flowers and their sweetness ; others beetles, delighted with 
other kinds of viands, which having enjoyed for a season, they would cease 
to be, and exist no more for ever. 

Sect. 56. How men come to choose ill. — These things, duly weighed, 
will give us, as I think, a clear view into the state of human liberty. Li- 
berty, it is plain, consists in a power to do, or not to do ; to do, or forbear 
doing, as we will. This cannot be denied. But this seeming to compre- 
hend only the actions of a man consecutive to volition, it is farther inqui- 
red, " whether he be at liberty to will, or no." And to this it has been 
answered, that in most cases a man is not at liberty to forbear the act of 
volition : he must exert an act of his will, whereby the action proposed is 
made to exist, or not to exist. But yet there is a case wherein a man is 
at liberty in respect of willing, and that is the choosing of a remote good 
as an end to be pursued. Here a man may suspend the act of his choice 
from being determined for or against the thing proposed, till he has ex- 
amined wnether it be really of a nature in itself, and consequences to make 
bin: happy, or no. For when he has once chosen it, and thereby it is be- 
come a part of his happiness, it raises desire, and that proportion- 
aoly gives him uneasiness, which determines his will, and sets him at 
work in pursuit of his choice on all occasions that offer. And here we 
may see how it comes to pass, that a man may justly incur punishment, 
though it be certain that in all the particular actions that he wills, he does, 
and necessarily does will that which he then judges to be good. For, 
though his will be always determined by that which is judged good by his 
understanding, yet it excuses him not : because, by a too hasty choice of his 
own making, he has imposed on himself wrong measures of good and 
evil ; which, however false and fallacious, have the same influence on aii 
his future conduct as if they were true and right. He has vitiated his 
own palate, and must be answerable to himself for the sickness and death 
that follows from it. The eternal law and nature of things must not be 
altered to comply with his ill-ordered choice. If the neglect or abuse of 
the liberty he had to examine what would really and truly make for his 
happiness misleads him, the miscarriages that follow on it must be imputed 
to its own election. He had a power to suspend his determination: it 
was given him that he might examine and take care of his own happiness 
W 



,70 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

and look that he were not deceived. And he could never judge that it 
was better to be deceived than not, in a matter of so great and near con- 
cernment. 

What has been said may also discover to us the reason why men in 
this world prefer different things, and pursue happiness by contrary courses. 
But yet, since men are always constant, and in earnest, in matters of hap- 
piness and misery, the question still remains, how men come often to 
prefer the worse to the better ; and to choose that which, by their own 
confession, has made them miserable 1 

Sect. 57. To account for the various and contrary ways men take, 
though all aim at being happy, we must consider whence the various un- 
easinesses, that determine the will in the preference of each voluntary 
action, have their rise. 

From bodily pains. — 1. Some of them come from causes not in our power: 
such as are often the pains of the body from want, disease, or outward 
injuries, as the rack, &c. which when present and violent, operate for the 
most part forcibly on the will, and turn the courses of men's lives from 
virtue, piety, and religion, and what before they judged to lead to happi- 
ness ; every one not endeavouring, or through disuse not being able, by 
the contemplation of remote and future good, to raise in himself desires of 
them strong enough to counterbalance the uneasiness he feels in those 
bodily torments, and to keep his will steady in the choice of those actions 
which lead to future happiness. A neighbour country has been of late a 
tragical theatre, from which we might fetch instances, if there needed any, 
and the world did not in all countries and ages furnish examples enough to 
confirm that received observation, "necessitas cogit ad turpia;" and there- 
fore there is great reason for us to pray, " lead us not into temptation." 

From wrong desires arising from wrong judgment. — Other uneasi- 
nesses arise from our desires of absent good ; which desires always bear 
proportion to, and depend on, the judgment we make, and the relish we 
have of any absent good : in both which we are apt to be variously misled, 
and that by our own fault. 

Sect. 58. Our judgment of present good or evil always right. — 2. In 
the first place I shall consider the wrong judgments men make of future 
good and evil, whereby their desires are misled. For, as to present hap- 
piness and misery, when that alone comes into consideration, and the 
consequences are quite removed, a man never chooses amiss ; he knows 
what best pleases him, and that he actually prefers. Things in their 
present enjoyment are what they seem ; the apparent and real good are, 
in this case, always the same : for the pain or pleasure being just so great, 
and no greater than it is felt, the present good or evil is really so much as 
it appears. And, therefore, were every action of ours concluded within 
itself, and drew no consequences after it, we should undoubtedly never err 
in our choice of good ; we should always infallibly prefer the best. Were 
the pains of honest industry and of starving with hunger and cold, set 
together before us, nobody would be in doubt which to choose : were 
the satisfaction of a lust, and the joys of heaven, offered at once to any 
one's present possession, he would not balance or err in the determination 
of his choice. 

Sect. 59. But since our voluntary actions carry not all the happiness 
and misery that depend on them along with them in their present perfor- 
mance, but are the precedent causes of good and evil, wliich they draw 
after them, and bring upon us, when they themselves are passed and cease 
to be ; our desires look beyond our present enjoyments, and carry the mind 
out to absent good, according to the necessity which we think there is of 
it to the making or increase of our happiness. It is our opinion of such a 
necessity that gives it its attraction : without that we are not moved by 
absent good. For in this narrow scantling of capacity, which we are ac • 



Ch. 21. OF POWER. IT] 

customed to and sensible of here, wherein we enjoy but one pleasure at 
once, which, when all uneasiness is away, is, whilst it lasts, sufficient to 
make us think ourselves happy, it is not all remote, and even apparent 
good, that affects us. Because the indolency and enjoyment we have 
sufficing for our present happiness, we desire not to venture the change ; 
smce we judge that we are happy already, being content, and that is 
enough. For who is content, is happy. But as soon as any new unea- 
siness comes in, this happiness is disturbed, and we are set afresh on work 
in the pursuit of happiness. 

Sect. 60. From a wrong judgment of what makes a necessary part of 
their happiness. — Their aptness therefore to conclude that they can be hap- 
py without it, is one great occasion that men often are not raised to the 
desire of the greatest absent good. For whilst such thoughts possess 
them, the joys of a future state move them not; they have little concern 
or uneasiness about them ; and the will, free from the determination of 
such desires, is left to the pursuit of nearer satisfactions, and to the re- 
moval of those uneasinesses which it then feels, in its want of and longings 
after them. Change but a man's view of these things ; let him see that 
virtue and religion are necessary to his happiness, let him look into the 
future state of bliss or misery, and see there God, the righteous judge, 
ready to " render to every man according to his deeds ; to them who by 
patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, and honour, and immor- 
tality, eternal life ; but unto every soul that doth evil, indignation and 
wrath, tribulation and anguish;" to him, I say, who hath a prospeel 
of the different state of perfect happiness or misery that attends all mer 
after this life, depending on their behaviour here, the measures of good and 
evil, that govern his choice, are mightily changed. For since nothing of 
pleasure and pain in this life can bear any proportion to the endless hap- 
piness, or exquisite misery, of an immortal soul hereafter, actions in his 
power will have their preference, not according to the transient pleasure 
or pain that accompanies or follows them here, but as they serve to secure 
that perfect durable happiness hereafter. 

Sect. 61. A more particular account of wrong judgments. — But to ac- 
count more particularly for the misery that men often bring on themselves, 
notwithstanding that they do all in earnest pursue happiness, we must 
consider how things come to be represented to our desires, under deceit- 
ful appearances ; and that is by the judgment pronouncing wrongly con- 
cerning them. To see how far this reaches, and what are the causes of 
wrong judgment, we must remember that things are judged good or bad in a 
double sense. 

First, That which is properly good or bad, is nothing but barely pleasure 
or pain. 

Secondly, But because not only present pleasure and pain, but that also 
which is apt by its efficacy or consequences to bring it upon us at a dis- 
tance, is a proper object of our desires, and apt to move a creature that 
has foresight : therefore things also that draw after them pleasure and pain 
are considered as good and evil. 

Sect. 62. The wrong judgment that misleads us, and makes the will 
often fasten on the worse side, lies in misreporting upon the various com- 
parisons of these. The wrong judgment I am here speaking of, is not what 
one man may think of the determination of another, but what every man 
himself must confess to be wrong. For since Hay it for a certain ground 
that every intelligent being really seeks happiness, which consists in the 
enjoyment of pleasure, without any considerable mixture of uneasiness ; 
it is impossible any one should willingly put into his own draught any 
bitter ingredient, or leave out any thing in his power that would tend to 
his satisfaction, and the completing of his happiness, but only by wrong judg- 
ment. I shall not here speak of that mistake, which is the consequence 



172 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book. 2. 

of invincible error, which scarce deserves the name of wrong judgment; 
but of that wrong judgment which every man himself must confess to 
be so. 

Sect. 63. In comparing present and future. — If, therefore, as to present 
pleasure and pain, the mind, as has been said, never mistakes that 
which is really good or evil ; that which is the greater pleasure, or the 
greater pain, is really just as it appears. But though present pleasure and 
pain show their difference and degrees so plainly as not to leave room for 
mistake, yet when we compare present pleasure or pain with future (which 
is usually the case in the most important determinations of the will,) we 
often make wrong judgments of them, taking our measures of them in dif- 
ferent positions of distance. Objects near our view are apt to be thought 
greater than those of a larger size that are more remote : and so it is with 
pleasures and pains, the present is apt to carry it, and those at a distance 
have the disadvantage in the comparison. Thus most men, like spendthrift 
heirs, are apt to judge a little in hand better than a great deal to come : and 
so, for small matters in possession, part with greater ones in reversion. 
But that this is a wrong judgment every one must allow, let his pleasure 
consist in whatever it will : since that which is future will certainly come 
to be present ; and then, having the same advantage of nearness, will show 
itself in its full dimensions, and discover his wilful mistake, who judged of it 
by unequal measures. Were the pleasure of drinking accompanied, the very 
moment a man takes off his glass, with that sick stomach and aching head, 
which, in some men, are sure to follow not many hours after, I think no- 
body, whatever pleasure he had in his cups, would, on these conditions, 
ever let wine touch his lips ; which yet he daily swallows, and the evil side 
comes to be chosen only by the fallacy of a little difference in time. But if 
pleasure or pain can be so lessened only by a few hours' removal, how 
much more will it be so by a farther distance, to a man that will not by a 
right judgment do what time will, i. e. bring it home upon himself, and 
consider it as present, and there take its true dimensions ! This is the 
way we usually impose on ourselves, in respect of bare pleasure and pain, 
or the true degrees of happiness or misery : the future loses its just propor- 
tion, and what is present obtains the preference as the greater. I mention 
not here the wrong judgment, whereby the absent are not only lessened, 
but reduced to perfect nothing ; when men enjoy what they can in present, 
and make sure of that, concluding amiss that no evil will thence follow. 
For that lies not in comparing the greatness of future good and evil, which 
is that we are here speaking of, but in another sort of wrong judgment, 
which is concerning good or evil, as it is considered to be the cause and 
procurement of pleasure or pain, that will follow from it. 

Sect. 64. Cause of this. — The cause of our judging amiss, when we • 
compare our present pleasure or pain with future, seems to me to be the 
weak and narrow constitution of our minds. We cannot well enjoy two 
pleasures at once, much less any pleasure almost whilst pain possesses 
us. The present pleasure, if it be not very languid, and almost none 
at all, fills our narrow souls, and so takes up the whole mind that it scarce 
leaves any thought of things absent ; or if, among our pleasures, there are 
some which are not strong enough to exclude the consideration of things 
at a distance ; yet we have so great an abhorrence of pain, that a little of 
it extinguishes all our pleasure ; a little bitter mingled in our cup leaves no 
relish of the sweet. Hence it comes that at any rate we desire to be rid 
of the present evil, which we are apt to think nothing absent can equal ; 
because, under the present pain, we find not ourselves capable of any the 
least degree of happiness. Men's daily complaints are a loud proof of this : 
the pain that any actually feels is still of all other the worst ; and it is 
with anguish they cry out, " Any rather than this ; nothing can be so in- 
tolerable as what I now suffer." And therefore our whole endeavours and 



Ch. 21. OF POWER. 173 

thoughts are intent to get rid of the present evil, before all things, as the 
first necessary condition to our happiness, let what will follow. Nothing; 
as we passionately think, can exceed, or almost equal, the uneasiness that 
sits so heavy upon us. And because the abstinence from a present plea- 
sure that offers itself is a pain, nay oftentimes a very great one, the desire 
being inflamed by a near and tempting object, it is no wonder that that 
operates after the same manner pain does, and lessens in our thoughts 
what is future ; and so forces us, as it were, blindfold into its embraces. 

Sect. 65. Add to this, that absent good, or which is the same thing, 
future pleasure, especially if of a sort we are unacquainted with, seldom is 
able to counterbalance any uneasiness, either of pain or desire, which is 
present. For its greatness being no more than what shall be really tasted 
when enjoyed, men are apt enough to lessen that, to make it give place to 
any present desire ; and conclude with themselves, that when it comes to 
trial, it may possibly not answer the report or opinion that generally passes 
of it ; they having often found, that not only what others have magnified, 
but even what they themselves have enjoyed with great pleasure and de- 
light at one time, has proved insipid or nauseous at another ; and therefore 
they see nothing in it for which they should forego a present enjoyment. 
But that this is a false way of judging, when applied to the happiness of 
another life, they must confess ; unless they will say, " God cannot make 
those happy he designs to be so." For that being intended for a state of 
happiness, it must certainly be agreeable to every one's wish and desire : 
could we suppose their relishes as different there, as they are here, yet the 
manna in heaven will suit every one's palate. Thus much of the wrong 
judgment we make of present and future pleasure and pain, when they are 
compared together, and so the absent considered as future. 

Sect. 66. In considering consequences of actions. — As to things good 
or bad in their consequences, and by the aptness that is in them to procure 
us good or evil in the future, we judge amiss several ways. 

1. When we judge that so much evil does not really depend on them, 
as in truth there does. 

2. When we judge, that though the consequence be of that moment, yet 
it is not of that certainty but that it may otherwise fall out, or else by some 
means be avoided, as by industry, address, change, repentance, &c. That 
these are wrong ways of judging, were easy to show in every particular, if 
I would examine them at large singly : but I shall only mention this in ge- 
neral, viz. that it is a very wrong and irrational way of proceeding, to ven- 
ture a greater good for a less, upon uncertain guesses, and before a due ex- 
amination be made proportionable to the weightiness of the matter, and the 
concernment it is to us not to mistake. This, I think, every one must 
confess, especially if he considers the usual causes of this wrong judgment, 
whereof these following are some : 

Sect. 67. Causes of this. — ] . Ignorance : he that judges without inform- 
ing himself to the utmost that he is capable, cannot acquit himself of judg- 
ing amiss. 

2. Inadvertency : when a man overlooks even that which he does know. 
This is an affected and present ignorance, which misleads our judgments 
as much as the other. Judging is, as it were, balancing an account, and 
determining on which side the odds lie. If therefore either side be huddled 
up in naste, and several of the sums that should have gone into the reck- 
oning 3e overlooked and left out, this precipitancy causes as wrong a 
judgment as if it were a perfect ignorance. That which most commonly 
causes this is the prevalency of some present pleasure or pain, heightened 
by our feeble passionate nature, most strongly wrought on by what is pre- 
sent. To check this precipitancy, our understanding and reason was given 
us, if we will make a right use of it, to search and see, and then judge there- 
upon Without liberty, the understanding would be to no purpose : and with- 



174 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book. 2. 

out understanding, liberty (if it could be) would signify nothing. If a man 
sees what would do him good or harm, what would make him happy or mis- 
erable, without being able to move himself one step towards or from it, 
what is he the better for seeing 1 And he that is at liberty to ramble in per- 
fect darkness, what is his liberty better than if he were driven up and down 
as a bubble by the force of the wind? The being acted by a blind impulse 
from without, or from within, is little odds. The first, therefore, and great 
use of liberty, is to hinder blind precipitancy ; the principal exercise of free- 
dom is to stand still, open the eyes, look about, and take a view of the con- 
sequence of what we are going to do, as much as the weight of the matter 
requires. How much sloth and negligence, heat and passion, the preva- 
lency of fashion, or acquired indispositions, do severally contribute on oc- 
casion to these wrong judgments, I shall not here farther inquire. I shall 
only add one other false judgment, which I think necessary to mention, be- 
cause, perhaps, it is little taken notice of, though of great influence. 

Sect. 68. Wrong judgment of what is necessary to our happiness. — 
All men desire happiness, that is past doubt; but, as has been already ob- 
served, when they are rid of pain, they are apt to take up with any pleasure 
afe hand, or that custom has endeared to them, to rest satisfied in that ; and 
so being happy, till some new desire, by making them uneasy, disturbs that 
happiness, and shows them that they are not so, they look no farther ; nor 
is the will determined to any action, in pursuit of any other known or ap- 
parent good. For since we find that we cannot enjoy all sorts of good, 
but one excludes another, we do not fix our desires on every apparent great- 
er good, unless it be judged to be necessary to our happiness ; if we think 
we can be happy without it, it moves us not. This is another occasion to 
men of judging wrong, when they take not that to be necessary to their 
happiness which really is so. This mistake misleads us both in the choice 
of the good we aim at, and very often in the means to it, when it is a re- 
mote good : but which way ever it be, either by placing it where really 
it j's not, or by neglecting the means as not necessary to it ; when a man 
misses his great end, happiness, he will acknowledge he judged not right. 
T ...at which contributes to this mistake, is the real or supposed unpleasant- 
ness of the actions which are the way to this end; it seeming so preposter- 
ous a thing to men to make themselves unhappy in order to happiness, that 
they do not easily bring themselves to it. 

Sect. 69. We can change the agreeableness or disagreeableness in 
things. — The last inquiry therefore concerning this matter is, " whether 
it be in a man's power to change the pleasantness and unpleasantness that 
accompanies any sort of action 1 " And as to that, it is plain in many 
cases he can. Men may and should correct their palates, and give relish 
to what either has, or they suppose has, none. The relish of the mind is 
as various as that of the body, and like that too may be altered; and it is a 
mistake to think that men cannot change the displeasingness or indifferency 
that is in actions into pleasure and desire, if they will do but what is in their 
power. A due consideration will do it in some cases ; and practice, applica- 
tion, and custom in most. Bread or tobacco may be neglected, where they 
are shown to be useful to health, because of an indifferency or disrelish to 
them ; reason and consideration at first recommend, and begin their trial, 
and use finds or custom makes them pleasant. That this is so in virtue too 
is very certain. Actions are pleasing or displeasing, either in themselves, 
or considered as a means to a greater and more desirable end. The eating 
of a well-seasoned dish, suited to a man's palate, may move the mind by the 
delight itself that accompanies the eating, without reference to any other 
end : to which the consideration of the pleasure there is in health and 
strength, (to which that meat is subservient) may add a new gusto, able 
to make us swallow an ill-relished potion. In the latter of these, any action 
is rendered more or less pleasing only by the contemplation of the end, and 



Ch. 21. OF POWER. 175 

the being more or less persuaded of its tendency to it, or necessary con- 
nexion with it : but the pleasure of the action itself is best acquired or in- 
creased by use and practice. Trials often reconcile us to that which at a 
distance we looked on with aversion, and by repetitions wear us into a 
liking of what possibly, in the first essay displeased us. Habits have 
powerful charms, and put so strong- attractions of easiness and pleasure 
into what we accustom ourselves to, that we cannot forbear to do, or at 
least be easy in the omission of actions, which habitual practice has suited, 
and thereby recommends to us. Though this be very visible, and every 
one's experience shows him he can do so ; yet it is a part in the conduct 
of men towards their happiness, neglected to a degree, that it will be pos- 
sibly entertained as a paradox, if it be said, that men can make things or 
actions more or less pleasing to themselves ; and thereby remedy that, to 
which one may justly impute a great deal of their wandering. Fashion 
and the common opinion having settled wrong notions, and education and 
custom ill habits, the just values of things are misplaced, and the pa- 
lates of men corrupted. Pains should be taken to rectify these; and con- 
trary habits change our pleasure, and give a relish to that which is neces- 
sary or conducive to our happiness. This every one must confess he can 
do ; and when happiness is lost, and misery overtakes him, he will confess 
he did amiss in neglecting it ; and condemn himself for it : and I ask every 
one, whether he has not often done so ? 

Sect. 70. Preference of vice to virtue a manifest wrong judgment. — 
I shall not now enlarge any farther on the wrong judgments and neglect 
of what is in their power, whereby men mislead themselves. This would 
make a volume, and is not my business. But whatever false notions, or 
shameful neglect of what is in their power, may put men out of their way to 
happiness, and distract them, as we see, into so different courses of life, 
this yet is certain, that morality, established upon its true foundations, can- 
not but determine the choice in any one that will but consider : and he that 
will not be so far a rational creature as to reflect seriously upon infinite 
happiness and misery, must needs condemn himself as not making that 
use of his understanding he should. The rewards and punishments of 
another life, which the Almighty has established as the enforcements of 
his law, are of weight enough to determine the choice, against whatever 
pleasure or pain this life can show, when the eternal state is considered 
but in its bare possibility, which nobody can make any doubt of. He that 
will allow exquisite and endless happiness to be but the possible conse- 
quence of a good life here, and the contrary state the possible reward of a 
bad one, must own himself to judge very much amiss if he does not con- 
clude, that a virtuous life, with the certain expectation of everlasting bliss, 
which may come, is to be preferred to a vicious one, with the fear of that 
dreadful state of misery, which it is very possible may overtake the guilty ; 
or at best the terrible uncertain hope of annihilation. This is evidently 
so, though the virtuous life here had nothing but pain, and the vicious con- 
tinual pleasure : which yet is, for the most part, quite otherwise, and 
wicked men have not much the odds to brag of, even in their present pos- 
session ; nay, all things rightly considered, have, I think, even the worst 
part here. But when infinite happiness is put in one scale against infinite 
misery in the other, if the worst that comes to the pious man, if he mis- 
takes, be the best that the wicked can attain to, if he be in the right, who 
can without madness run the venture? Who in his wits would choose to 
come within a possibility of infinite misery, which, if he miss, there is yet 
nothing to be got by the hazard 1 Whereas, on the other side, the sober 
man ventures nothing against infinite happiness to be got, if his expecta- 
tion comes to pass. If the good man be in the right, he is eternally happy ; 
if he mistakes, he is not miserable ; he feels nothing. On the other 
side, if the wicked man be in the right, he is not happy ; if he mistakes, he is 



176 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

infinitely miserable. Must it not be a most manifest wrong judgment that 
does not presently see to which side, in this case, the preference is to be 
given ] I have forborne to mention any thing of the certainty or probability of 
a future state, designing here to show the wrong judgment that any one 
must allow he makes upon his own principles, laid how he pleases, who 
prefers the short pleasures of a vicious life upon any consideration, whilst 
he knows, and cannot but be certain, that a future life is at least possible. 
Sect. 71. Recapitulation. — To conclude this inquiry into human liberty, 
vhich, as it stood before, I myself from the beginning fearing, and a very 
judicious friend of mine, since the publication, suspecting to have some 
mistake in it, though he could not particularly show it me, I was put 
upon a stricter review of this chapter ; wherein lighting upon a very easy 
and scarce observable slip I had made, in putting one seemingly indif- 
erent word for another, that discovery opened to me this present view, 
which here, in this second edition, I submit to the learned world, and which 
in short is this : " Liberty is a power to act or not to act, according as the 
mind directs." A power to direct the operative faculties to motion or 
rest in particular instances, is that which we call the will. That which 
in the train of our voluntary actions determines the will to any change of 
operation, is some present uneasiness ; which is, or at least is always ac- 
companied with, that of desire. Desire is always moved by evil, to fly it; 
because a total freedom from pain always makes a necessary part of our 
happiness : but every good, nay, every greater good, does not constantly 
move desire, because it may not make, or may not be taken to make, any 
necessary part of our happiness: for all that we desire is only to be happy. 
But though this general desire of happiness operates constantly and inva- 
riably, yet the satisfaction of any particular desire can be suspended from 
determining the will to any subservient action till we have maturely ex- 
amined, whether the particular apparent good, which we then desire, 
makes a part of our real happiness, or be consistent or inconsistent with it. 
The result of our judgment upon that examination is what ultimately de- 
termines the man, who could not be free if his will were determined by 
any thing but his own desire, guided by his own judgment. I know that 
liberty by some is placed in an indifferency of the man antecedent to the 
determination of his will. I wish they, who lay so much stress on such an 
antecedent indifferency, as they call it, had told us plainly, whether this 
supposed indifferency be antecedent to the thought and judgment of 
the understanding, as well as to the decree of the will. For it is pretty 
hard to state it between them ; i. e. immediately after the judgment of the 
understanding, and before the determination of the will, because the de- 
termination of the will immediately follows the judgment of the understand- 
ing: and to place liberty in an indifferency, antecedent to the thought 
and judgment of the understanding, seems to me to place liberty in a state 
of darkness, wherein we can neither see nor say any thing of it; at k*ast 
it places it in a subject incapable of it, no agent being allowed capable of 
liberty but in consequence of thought and judgment. I am not nice about 
phrases, and therefore consent to say, with those that love to speak so, that 
liberty is placed in indifferency ; but it is an indifferency which remains 
after the judgment of the understanding; yea, even after the determination 
of the will : and that is an indifferency not of the man (for after he has 
once judged which is best, viz. to do or forbear, he is no longer indif- 
ferent,) but an indifferency of the operative powers of the man, which, 
remaining equally able to operate, or to forbear operating, after, as before, 
the decree of the will, are in a state which, if one pleases, may be called 
indifferency ; and as far as this indifferency reaches, a man is free, and no 
farther : v. g. I have the ability to move my hand, or to let it rest ; that 
operative power is indifferent to move, or not to move my hand: I am 
then in that respect perfectly free. My will determines that operative 



Ch.21. OF POWER. 177 

power to rest, I am yet free, because the indifferency of that my ope- 
rative power to act, or not to act, still remains ; the power of moving my 
hand is not at all impaired by the determination of my will, which at pre- 
sent orders rest; the indifferency of that power to act, or not to act, is just as 
it was before, as will appear, if the will puts it to the trial, by ordering the 
contrary. But if during the rest of my hand it be seized by a sudden palsy, 
the indifferency of that operative power is gone ; and with it my liberty; 
I have no longer freedom in that respect, but am under a necessity of let- 
ting my hand rest. On the other side, if my hand be put into motion by a 
convulsion, the indifferency of that operative faculty is taken away by that 
motion, and my liberty in that case is lost : for I am under a necessity of 
having my hand move. I have added this to show in what sort of in- 
differency liberty seems to me to consist, and not in any other, real or 
imaginary. 

Sect. 72. True notions concerning the nature and extent of liberty 
are of so great importance, that I hope I shall be pardoned this digression, 
which my attempt to explain it has led me into. The ideas of will, volition, 
liberty, and necessity, in this chapter of power, came naturally in my way. 
In a former edition of this treatise I gave an account of my thoughts con- 
cerning them, according to the light I then had : and now, as a lover of 
truth, and not a worshipper of my own doctrines, I own some change of 
my opinion, which I think I have discovered ground for. In what I first 
writ, I with an unbiassed indifferency followed truth, whither I thought she 
led me. But neither being so vain as to fancy infallibility, nor so disin- 
genuous as to dissemble my mistakes for fear of blemishing my reputation, 
I have, with the same sincere design for truth only, not been ashamed to 
publish what a severer inquiry has suggested. It is not impossible but that 
eome may think my former notions right, and some (as I have already 
found) these latter, and some neither. I shall not at all wonder at this 
variety in men's opinions ; impartial deductions of reason in controverted 
points being so rare, and exact ones in abstract notions not so very easy, 
especially if of any length. And therefore I should think myself not a little 
beholden to any one, who would upon these, or any other grounds, 
fairly clear this subject of liberty from any difficulties that may yet 
remain. 

Before I close this chapter,- it may perhaps be to our purpose, and help 
to give us clearer conceptions about power, if we make our thoughts take 
a little more exact survey of action. I have said above, that we have ideas 
but of two sorts of action, viz. motion and thinking. These, in truth, 
though called and counted actions, yet, if nearly considered, will not be 
found to be always perfectly so. For, if I mistake not, there are instan- 
ces of both kinds, which, upon due consideration, will be found rather 
passions than actions, and consequently so far the effects barely of passive 
powers in those subjects, which yet on their accounts are thought agents. 
For in these instances, the substance that has motion or thought receives 
the impression, where it is put into that action purely from without, and 
so acts merely by the capacity it has to receive such an impression from 
some external agent ; and such a power is not properly an active power, 
but a mere passive capacity in the subject. Sometimes the substance or 
agent puts itself into action by its own power, and this is properly active 
power. Whatsoever modification a substance has, whereby it produces 
any effect, that is called action : v. g. a solid substance by motion operates 
on or alters the sensible ideas of another substance, and therefore this modi- 
fication of motion we call action. But yet this motion in that solid substance 
is, when rightly considered, but a passion, if it received it only from some ex- 
ternal agent. So that the active power of motion is in no substance which 
cannot begin motion in itself, or in another substance, when at rest. So 
X 



178 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

likewise in thinking", a power to receive ideas or thoughts, from the opera 
tion of any external substance, is called a power of thinking : but this if 
but a passive power, or capacity. But to be able to bring into view ideas 
out of sight at one's own choice, and to compare which of them one thinks 
tit, this is an active power. This reflection may be of some use to pre- 
serve us from mistakes about powers and actions, which grammar and the 
common frame of languages may be apt to lead us into ; since what is sig- 
nified by verbs that grammarians call active, does not always signify ac- 
tion : v. g. this proposition, I see the moon, or a star, or I feel the heat of 
the sun, though expressed by a verb active, does not signify any action in 
me, whereby I operate on those substances ; but the reception of the ideas 
of light, roundness, and heat, wherein I am not active, but barely passive, 
and cannot in that position of my eyes or body avoid receiving them. But 
when I turn my eyes another way, or remove my body out of the sunbeams, 
I am properly active, because of my own choice, by a power within my- 
self, I put myself into that motion. Such an action is the product of active 
power. 

Sect. 73. And thus I have, in a short draught, given a view of our ori- 
ginal ideas, from whence all the rest are derived, and of which they are 
made up ; which if I would consider as a philosopher, and examine on what 
causes they depend, and of what they are made, I believe they all might be 
reduced to these very few primary and original ones, viz. extension, solidi- 
ty, mobility, or the power of being moved, which by our senses we receive 
from body; perceptivity, or the power of perception or thinking: motivity, 
or the power of moving; which by reflection we receive from our minds. 
I crave leave to make use of these two new words, to avoid the danger of 
being mistaken in the use of those which are equivocal. To which if we 
add existence, duration, number, — which belong both to the one and the 
other, — we have, perhaps, all the original ideas, on which the rest depend. 
For, by these, 1 imagine, might be explained the nature of colours, sounds, 
tastes, smells, and all other ideas we have, if we had but faculties acute 
enough to perceive the severally modified extensions and motions of these 
minute bodies, which produce those several sensations in us. But my pre- 
sent purpose being only to inquire into the knowledge the mind has of 
things, by those ideas and appearances which God has fitted it to receive 
from them, and how the mind comes by that knowledge, rather than into 
their causes or manner of production ; I shall not, contrary to the design of 
this essay, set myself to inquire philosophically into the peculiar constitu- 
tion of bodies, and the configuration of parts, whereby they have the power 
to produce in us the ideas of their sensible qualities : I shall not enter any 
farther into that disquisition, it sufficing to my purpose to observe., that gold 
or saffron has a power to produce in us the idea of yellow-, and snow 
or milk the idea of white, which we can only have by our sight, without exam- 
ining the texture of the parts of those bodies, or the particular figures or mo- 
tion of the particles which rebound from them, to cause in us that particular 
sensation : though when we go beyond the bare ideas in our minds, and would 
inquire into their causes, we cannot conceive any thing else to be in any 
sensible object, whereby it produces different ideas in us, but the different 
buik, figure, number, texture, and motion of its insensible parts. 



Ch. 22. OF MIXED MODES. 179 



CHAPTER XXII. 

OF MIXED MODES. 

Sect. 1. Mixed modes, what. — Having treated of simple modes m the 
foregoing chapters, and given several instances of some of the most con- 
siderable of them, to show what they are, and how we come by them, 
we are now in the next place to consider those we call mixed modes : such 
are the complex ideas we mark by the names obligation, drunkenness, a 
lie, &c. which consisting of several combinations of simple ideas of differ- 
ent kinds, I have called mixed modes, to distinguish them from the more 
simple modes, which consist only of simple ideas of the same kind. These 
mixed modes being also such combinations of simple ideas as are not looked 
upon to be characteristical marks of any real beings that have a steady 
existence, but scattered and independent ideas put together by the mind, 
are thereby distinguishable from the complex ideas of substances. 

Sect. 2. Made by the mind. — That the mind, in respect of its simple 
ideas, is wholly passive, and receives them all from the existence and ope- 
rations of things, such as sensation or reflection offers them, without being 
able to make any one idea, experience shows us : but if we attentively 
consider these ideas I call mixed modes, we are now speaking of, we shall 
find their original quite different. The mind often exercises an active 
power in making these several combinations : for it being once furnished 
with simple ideas, it can put them together in several compositions, and 
so make variety of complex ideas, without examining whether they exist so 
together in nature. And hence I think it is that these ideas are called 
notions, as if they had their original and constant existence more in the 
thoughts of men than in the reality of things : and to form such ideas, it 
sufficed that the mind puts the parts of them together, and that they were 
consistent in the understanding, without considering whether they had 
any real being : though I do not deny but several of them might be taken 
from observation, and the existence of several simple ideas so combined, 
as they are put together in the understanding. For the man who first 
framed the idea of hypocrisy might have either taken it at first from the 
observation of one, who made show of good qualities which he had not, 
or else have framed that idea in his mind, without having any such pattern 
to fashion it by : for it is evident, that in the beginning of languages and 
societies of men, several of those complex ideas, which were consequent 
to the constitutions established among them, must needs have been in the 
minds of men, before they existed any where else: and that many names 
that stood for such complex ideas were in use, and so those ideas framed, 
before the combinations they stood for ever existed. 

Sect. 3. Sometimes got by the explication of their names. — Indeed, 
now that languages are made, and abound with words standing for such 
combinations, a usual way of getting these complex ideas is by the ex- 
plication of those terms that stand for them : for consisting of a company 
of simple ideas combined, they may by words, standing for those simple 
ideas, be represented to the mind of one who understands those words, 
though that complex combination of simple ideas were never offered to his 
mind by the real existence of things. Thus a man may come to have the 
idea of sacrilege" or murder, by enumerating to him the simple ideas which 
these words stand for, without ever seeing either of them committed. 

Sect. 4. The name ties the parts of mixed modes into one idea. — Every 
mixed mode consisting of many distinct simple ideas, it seems reasonable 



180 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

to inquire, " whence it has its unity, and how such a precise multitude 
comes to make but one idea, since that combination does not always exist 
together in nature ?" To which I answer, it is plain it has its unity from an 
act of the mind combining those several simple ideas together, and con- 
sidering them as one complex one, consisting of those parts ; and the mark 
of this union, or that which is looked on generally to complete it, is one name 
given to that combination. For it is by their names that men commonly 
regulate their account of their distinct species of mixed modes, seldom 
allowing or considering any number of simple ideas to make one complex 
one, but such collections as there be names for. Thus, though the 
killing of an old man be as fit in nature to be united into one complex idea as 
the killing a man's father: yet there being no name standing precisely for 
the one, as there is the name of parricide to mark the other, it is not 
taken for a particular complex idea, nor a distinct species of actions from that 
of killing a young man, or any other man. 

Sect. 5. The cause of making mixed modes. — If we should inquire a little 
farther, to see what it is that occasions men to make several combinations 
of simple ideas into distinct, and, as it were, settled modes, and neglect others 
which in the nature of things themselves have as much aptness to be com 
bined and make distinct ideas, we shall find the reason of it to be the end of 
language ; which being to mark or communicate men's thoughts to one 
another with all the despatch that may be, they usually made such collec- 
tions of ideas into complex modes, and affix names to them, as they have 
frequent use of in their way of living and conversation, leaving others, 
which they have but seldom an occasion to mention, loose and without 
names to tie them together; they rather choosing to enumerate (when 
they have need) such ideas as make them up, by the particular names 
that stand for them, than to trouble their memories by multiplying of complex 
ideas with names to them, which they seldom or never have any occasion 
to make use of. 

Sect. 6. Why words in one language have none answering in another. 
— This shows us how it comes to pass, that there are in every language 
many particular words which cannot be rendered by any one single word 
of another. For the several fashions, customs, and manners of one nation, 
making several combinations of ideas familiar and necessary in one, which 
another people have had never any occasion to make, or perhaps so much 
as taken notice of; names come of course to be annexed to them, to avoid 
long periphrases in things of daily conversation, and so they become so many 
distinct complex ideas in their minds. Thus 6r§«*/<r,woc among the Greeks, and 
proscriptio among the Romans, were words which other languages had no 
names that exactly answered, because they stood for complex ideas, which 
were not in the minds of the men of other nations. Where there was no 
such custom, there was no notion of any such actions; no use of such com- 
binations of ideas as were united, and as it were tied together by those terms : 
and therefore in other countries there were no names for them. 

Sect. 7. And languages change. — Hence also we may see the reason 
why languages constantly change, take up new and lay by old terms ; because 
change of customs and opinions bringing with it new combinations of ideas, 
which it is necessary frequently to think on, and talk about, new names, 
to avoid long descriptions, are annexed to them, and so they become new 
species of complex modes. What a number of different ideas are by this 
means wrapt up in one short sound, and how much of our time and breath is 
thereby saved, any one will see, who will but take pains to enumerate all the 
ideas that either reprieve or appeal stand for ; and, instead of either of 
those names, use a periphrasis, to make any one understand their meaning. 

Sect. 8. Mixed modes, where they exist. — Though I shall have occasion 
to consider this more at large, when I come to treat of words and their 
use, yet I could not avoid to take thus much notice here of the names of 



Ch. 22. OF MIXED MODES. 18X 

mixed modes; which being- fleeting and transient combinations of simple 
ideas, which have but a short existence any where but in the minds of men, 
and there, too, have no longer any existence than whilst they are thought 
on, have not so much any where the appearance of a constant and lasting 
existence as in their names : which are, therefore, in this sort of ideas, very 
apt to be taken for the ideas themselves. For if we should inquire where the 
idea of a triumph or apotheosis exists, it is evident they could neither of 
them exist altogether any where in the things themselves, being actions 
that required time to their performance, and so could never all exist together : 
and as to the minds of men, where the ideas of those actions are supposed 
to be lodged, they have there too a very uncertain existence ; and therefore 
we are apt to annex them to the names that excite them in us. 

Sect. 9. How we get the ideas of mixed modes. — There are therefore 
three ways whereby we get the complex ideas of mixed modes. 1. By 
experience and observation of things themselves. Thus by seeing two men 
wrestle or fence, we get the idea of wrestling or fencing. 2. By invention, 
or voluntarily putting together of several simple ideas in our own minds : 
so he that first invented printing, or etching, had an idea of it in his mind 
before it ever existed. 3. Which is the most usual way, by explaining 
the names of actions we never saw, or notions we cannot see ; and by 
enumerating, and thereby, as it were, setting before our imaginations all 
those ideas which go to the making them up, and are the constituent parts 
of them. For having by sensation and reflection stored our minds with 
simple ideas, and by use got the names that stand for them, we can by 
those means represent to another any complex idea we would have him 
conceive ; so that it has in it no simple ideas but what he knows and has 
with us the same name for. For all our complex ideas are ultimately 
resolvable into simple ideas, of which they are compounded and originally 
made up, though perhaps their immediate ingredients, as I may so say, 
are also complex ideas. Thus the mixed mode, which the word lie stands for, 
is made up of these simple ideas : 1. Articulate sounds. 2. Certain ideas 
in the mind of the speaker. 3. Those words the signs of those ideas. 4. 
Those signs put together by affirmation or negation, otherwise than 
the ideas they stand for, are in the mind of the speaker. I think I need 
not go any farther in the analysis of that complex idea we call a lie : what 
I have said is enough to show, that it is made up of simple ideas ; and 
it could not be but an offensive tediousness to my reader, to trouble him 
with a more minute enumeration of every particular simple idea that goes 
to this complex one ; which, from what has been said, he cannot but be 
able to make out to himself. The same may be done in all our complex 
ideas whatsoever ; which, however compounded and decompounded, may 
at last be resolved into simple ideas, which are all the materials of know- 
ledge or thought we have, or can have. Nor shall we have reason to 
fear that the mind is hereby stinted to too scanty a number of ideas, 
if we consider what an inexhaustible stock of simple modes, number 
and figure alone afford us. How far then mixed modes, which admit of the 
various combinations of different simple ideas, and their infinite modes, are 
from being few and scanty, we may easily imagine. So that before we have 
done, we shall see that nobody need be afraid he shall not have scope and 
compass enough for his thoughts to range in, though they be, as I pretend, 
confined only to simple ideas received from sensation or reflection, and 
their several combinations. 

Sect. 10. Motion, thinking, and power, have been most modified. — It 
is worth our observing, which of all our simple ideas have been most modi- 
fied, and had most mixed ideas made out of them, with names given to 
them ; and those have been these three : thinking and motion (which are 
the two ideas which comprehend in them all action) and power, from 
whence these actions are conceived to flow. The simple ideas, I say, of 



182 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

thinking, motion, and power, have been those which have been most mo- 
dified, and out of whose modifications have been made most complex 
modes with names to them. For action being the great business of man- 
kind, and the whole matter about which all laws are conversant, it is no 
wonder that the several modes of thinking and motion should be taken 
notice of, the ideas of them observed, and laid up in the memory, and have 
names assigned to them; without which, laws could be but ill made, or 
vice and disorder repressed. Nor could any communication be well had 
among men without such complex ideas with names to them : and there- 
fore men have settled names, and supposed settled ideas in their minds, 
of modes of action distinguished by their causes, means, objects, ends, in- 
struments, time, place, and other circumstances; and also of their powers 
fitted for those actions : v. g. boldness is the power to speak or do what 
we intend, before others, without fear or disorder; and the Greeks call the 
confidence of speaking by a peculiar name, o-appao-/*: which power or 
ability in man, of doing any thing, when it has been acquired by frequent 
doing the same thing, is that idea we name habit ; when, it is forward, and 
ready upon every occasion to break into action, we call it disposition. 
Thus, testiness is a disposition or aptness to be angry. 

To conclude : let us examine any modes of action, v. g. consideration 
and assent, which are actions of the mind ; running and speaking, which 
are actions of the body; revenge and murder, which are actions of both to- 
gether ; and we shall find them but so many collections of simple ideas, 
which together make up the complex ones signified by those names. 

Sect. 11. Several words seeming to signify action, signify but the 
effect. — Power being the source from whence all action proceeds, the sub- 
stances wherein these powers are, when they exert this power into act, 
are called causes ; and the substances which thereupon are produced, or 
the simple ideas which are introduced into any subject by the exerting ot 
that power, are called effects. The efficacy whereby the new substance 
or idea is produced, is called, in the subject exerting that power, action ; 
but in the subject wherein any simple idea is changed or produced, it is 
called passion : which efficacy, however various, and the effects almost in- 
finite, yet we can, I think, conceive it, in intellectual agents, to be nothing 
else but modes of thinking and willing; in corporeal agents, nothing else 
but modifications of motion. I say, I think we cannot conceive it to be 
any other but these two : for whatever sort of action, besides these, pro- 
duces any effects, I confess myself to have no notion or idea of; and so it 
is quite remote from my thoughts, apprehensions and knowledge ; and as 
much in the dark to me as five other senses, or as the ideas of colours to a 
blind man : and therefore many words, which seem to express some ac- 
tion, signify nothing of the action or modus operandi at all, but barely the 
effect, with some circumstances of the subject wrought on, or cause ope- 
rating; v. g. creation, annihilation, contain in them no idea of the action 
or manner whereby they are produced, but barely, of the cause and the 
thing done. And when a countryman says the cold freezes water, though 
the word freezing seems to import some action, yet truly it signifies no- 
thing but the effect, viz. that water that was before fluid is become hard 
and consistent, without containing any idea of the action whereby it is 
done. 

Sect. 12. Mixed modes made also of other ideas. — I think I shall not 
need to remark here, that though power and action make the greatest part 
of mixed modes, marked by names, and familiar in the minds and mouths 
of men, yet other simple ideas, and their several combinations, are not ex- 
cluded: much less, I think, will it be necessary for me to enumerate all 
the mixed modes which have been settled with names to them. That 
would be to make a dictionary of the greatest part of the words made use 
of in divinity, ethics, law, and politics, and several other sciences. All 
that is requisite to my present design is, to show what sort of ideas those 



Ch. 22. OF MIXED MODES. 183 

ire, which I call mixed modes, how the mind comes by them, and that tney 
are compositions made up of simple ideas got from sensation audi eflection; 
which I suppose I have done. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

OF OUR COMPLEX IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 

Sect. 1. Ideas of substances, how made. — The mind being, as I have 
declared, furnished with a great number of the simple ideas, conveyed in 
by the senses, as they are found in exterior things, or by reflection on its 
own operations, takes notice also, that a certain number of these simple ideas 
go constantly together ; which being presumed to belong to one thing, and 
words being suited to common apprehensions, and made use of for quick 
despatch, are called, so united in one subject, by one name ; which, by in- 
advertency, we are apt afterward to talk of, and consider as one simple idea, 
which indeed is a complication of many ideas together : because, as I have 
said, not imagining how these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we 
accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist, 
and from which they do result, and which therefore we call substance^). 

(3) This section, which was intended only to show how the individuals of dis- 
tinct species of substances came to be looked upon as simple ideas, and so to 
have simple names, viz. from the supposed substratum or substance, which was 
looked upon as the thing itself in which inhered, and from which resulted, that 
complication of ideas, by which it was represented to us, hath been mistaken 
for an account of the idea of substance in general ; and as such, hath been repre- 
sented in these words : But how comes the general idea of substance to be framed 
in our minds ? Is this by abstracting and enlarging simple ideas ? No : But 
" it is by a complication of many simple ideas together : because, not imagin- 
ing how these simple ideas can subsist by themselves, we accustom ourselves 
to suppose some substratum wherein they do subsist, and from whence they do 
result; which therefore we call substance. " And is this all, indeed, thatistobe 
said for the being of substance, That we accustom ourselves to suppose a substra- 
tum ? Is that custom grounded upon true reason, or not ? If not, then accidents or 
modes must subsist of themselves ; and these simple ideas need no tortoise to 
support them ; for figures and colours, &c. would do well enough of themselves, 
but for some fancies men have accustomed themselves to. 

To which objection of the bishop of Worcester, our author* answers thus: 
Herein your lordship seems to charge me with two faults : one, That I make the 
general idea of substance to be framed, not by abstracting and enlarging simple 
ideas, but by a complication of many simple ideas together : the other, as if I had 
said, the being of substance had no other foundation but the fancies of men. 

As to the first of these, I beg leave to remind your lordship, that I say in more 
places than one, and particularly Book 3, Chap. 3, Sect. 6, and Book 1, Chap. 11, 
Sect. 9, where, ex professo, I treat of abstraction and general ideas, that they are 
all made by abstracting, and therefore could not be understood to mean, that that 
of substance was made any other way ; however my pen might have slipt, or the 
negligence of expression, where I might have something else than the general idea 
of substance in view, might make me seem to say so. 

That I was not speaking of the general idea of substance in the passage your 
lordship quotes, is manifest from the title of that chapter, which is, Of the com- 
plex ideas of substances ; and the first section of it, which your lordship cites for 
those words you have set down. 

In which words I do not observe any that deny the general idea of substance to 

* In his first letter to the Bishop of Worcester. 



!34 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

Sect. 2. Our idea af substance in general. — So that if any one will ex- 
amine himself concerning his notion of pure substance in general, he will 
find he has no other idea of it at all, but only a supposition of he knows not 
what support of such qualities, which are capable of producing simple ideas 

be made by abstracting, nor any that say it is made by a complication of many 
simple ideas together. But speaking in that place of the ideas of distinct sub- 
stances, such as man, horse, gold, &c, I say they are made up of certain combi- 
nations of simple ideas, which combinations are looked upon, each of them, as 
one simple idea, though they are many ; and Ave call it by one name of substance, 
though made up of modes, from the custom of supposing a substratum, wherein 
that combination does subsist. So that in this paragraph I only give an account 
of the idea of distinct substances, such as oak, elephant, iron, &c. how, though 
they are made up of distinct complications of modes, yet they are looked on as 
one idea, called by one name, as making distinct sorts of substance. 

But that my notion of substance in general is quite different from these, and 
has no such combination of simple ideas in it, is evident from the immediate fol- 
lowing words, where I say*, " The idea of pure substance in general is only a 
supposition of we know not what support of such qualities as are capable of pro- 
ducing simple ideas in us." And these two I plainly distinguish all along, par- 
ticularly where I say, "whatever therefore be the secret and abstract nature of 
substance in general, all the ideas we have of particular distinct substances, are 
nothing but several combinations of simple ideas, co-existing in such, though un- 
known cause of their union, as makes the whole subsist of itself. " 

The other thing laid to my charge, is, as if I took the being of substance to be 
doubtful, or rendered it so by the imperfect and ill-grounded idea I have given 
of it. To which I beg leave to say, that 1 ground not the bef ig, but the idea of 
substance, on our accustoming ourselves to suppose some subrtratum; for it is of 
the idea alone I speak there, and not of the being of substnnce. And having 
every where affirmed and built upon it, that a man is a substance, I cannot be 
supposed to question or doubt of the being of substance, till I can question or 
doubt of my own being. Farther, 1 sayf, " Sensation convince vis, that there are 
solid, extended substances ; and reflection, that there are thiiiking ones." So 
that, I think, the being of substance is not shaken by what I have said ; and if 
the idea of it should be, yet (the being of things depending not on our ideas) the 
being of substance would not be at all shaken by my saying, we had but an ob- 
scure imperfect idea of it, and that that idea came from our accustoming our- 
selves to suppose some substratum : or indeed, if I should say, we had no idea of 
substance at all. For a great many things may be, and are granted to have a 
being, and be in nature, of which we have no ideas. For example: it cannot be 
doubted but there are distinct species of separate spirits, of which yet we have no 
distinct ideas at all : it cannot be questioned but spirits have ways of communi- 
cating their thoughts, and yet we have no idea of it at all. 

The being then of substance being safe and secure, notwithstanding any thing 
I have said, let us see whether the idea of it be not so too. Your lordship asks, 
with concern, and is this all, indeed, that is to be said for the being (if your lord- 
ship please, let it be the idea) of substance, that we accustom ourselves to sup- 
pose a substratum ? Is that custom grounded upon true reason or no ? 1 have said 
that it is grounded upon this:):, " That we cannot conceive how simple ideas of 
sensible qualities should subsist alone ; and therefore we suppose them to exist 
in, and to be supported by some common subject ; which support we denote by 
the name substance." Which, I think, is a true reason, because it is the same 
your lordship grounds the supposition of a siibstratum on, in this very page; even 
on the repugnancy to our conceptions, that modes and accidents should subsist by 
themselves. So that I have the good luck to agree here with your lordship : and 
consequently conclude, I have your approbation in this, that the substratum to 
modes or accidents, which is our idea of substance in general, is founded in this, 
" that we cannot coneeive how modes or accidents can subsist by themselves." 

* B. 2. C. 23. Sec. 2. + lb. Sec. 29. % B. 2. C. 23. Sea <t. 



Ch. 23. OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 185 

m us ; which qualities are commonly called accidents. If any one should 
be asked, what is the subject wherein colour or weight inheres 1 he would 
have nothing to say, but the solid extended parts : and if he were demand- 
ed, what is it that solidity and extension inhere in ] he would not be in a much 
better case than the Indian before mentioned, who, saying that the world 
w T as supported by a great elephant, was asked what the elephant rested on 7 
to which his answer was, a great tortoise. But being again pressed to 
know what gave support to the broad backed tortoise, replied, something, 
he knew not what. And thus here, as in all other cases where we use words 
without having clear and distinct ideas, we talk like children ; who being 
questioned what such a thing is, which they know not, readily give this satis- 
factory answer, that it is something : which, in truth, signifies no more, 
when so used, either by children or men, but that they know not what ; and 
that the thing they pretend to know and talk of, is what they have no dis- 
tinct idea of at all, and so are perfectly ignorant of it, and in the dark. The 
idea, then, we have, to which we give the general name substance, being 
nothing but the supposed, but unknown, support of those qualities we find 
existing, which we imagine cannot subsist sine re substante, without some- 
thing to support them, we call that support substantial ; which, according 
to the true import of the word, is, in plain English, standing under, or up- 
holding^). 

(4) From this paragraph, there hath been raised an objection by the bishop of 
Worcester, as if our author's doctrine here concerning ideas had almost discard- 
ed substance out of the world: his words in this paragraph being brought to 
prove, that he is one of the gentlemen of this new way of reasoning, that have 
almost discarded substance out of the reasonable part of the world. To which 
our author replies*, This, my lord, is an accusation, which your lordship will 
pardon me, if I do not readily know what to plead to, because I do not under- 
stand what it is almost to discard substance out of the reasonable part of the 
world. If your lordship means by it, that I deny, or doubt, that there is in the 
world any such thing as substance, that your lordship will acquit me of, when 
your lordship looks again into this 23d chapter of the second book, which you 
have cited more than once ; where you will find these words, sect. 4," When we 
talk or think of any particular sort of corporeal substances, as horse, stone, &c. 
though the idea we have of either of them be but the complication or collection 
of those several simple ideas of sensible qualities, which we use to find united in 
the thing called horse or stone ; yet because we cannot conceive how they should 
subsist alone, nor one in another, we suppose them existing in, and supported by, 
some common subject, which support we denote by the name substance ; though 
it is certain we have no clear or distinct idea of that thing we suppose a support." 
And again, seet. 5, "The same happens concerning the operations of the mind, viz. 
thinking, reasoning, fearing, &c. which we considering not to subsist of them- 
selves, nor apprehending how they can belong to body, or be produced by it, 
are apt to think these the actions of some other substance, which we call spirit; 
whereby yet it is evident, that having no other idea or notion of matter, but some- 
thing wherein those many sensible qualities, which affect our senses, do subsist, 
by supposing a substance, wherein thinking, knowing, doubting, and a power of 
moving, &c. do subsist, we have as clear a notion of the nature or substance of 
spirit, as we have of body ; the one being supposed to be (without knowing what 
it is) the substratum to those simple ideas we have from without : and the other 
supposed (with a like ignorance of what it is) to be the substratum to those ope- 
rations, which we experiment in ourselves within. " And again, sect. 6, " Whatever 
therefore be the secret nature of substance in general, all the ideas we have of 
pprticular distinct substances, are nothing but several combinations of simple 
ideas, coexisting in such, though unknown cause of their union, as makes the 
whole subsist of itself." And I farther say, in the same section, " that we sup- 

* In his first letter to that bishop. 



186 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

Sect. 3. Of the sorts of substances. — An obscure and relative idea ot 
Bubstance in general being thus made, we come to have the ideas of particular 
sorts of substances, by collecting such combinations of simple ideas, as are, by 
experience and observation of men's senses, taken notice of to exist to- 

pose these combinations to rest in, and to be adherent to, that unknown common 
subject which inheres not in any thing else." And, sect. 3, "That our complex 
ideas of substances, besides all those simple ideas they are made up of, have 
•always the confused idea of something to which they belong, and in which they 
subsist; and therefore, when we speak of any sort of substance, we say it is a 
thing having such and such qualities; as body is a thing that is extended, figured, 
and capable of motion ; spirit, a thing capable of thinking. 

"These, and the like fashions of speaking intimate, that the substance is sup- 
posed always something besides the extension, figure, solidity, motion, thinking, 
or other observable idea, though we know not what it is. " 

" Our idea of body, I say*, is an extended, solid substance ; and our idea of soul, 
is of a substance that thinks. " So that as long as there is any such thing as body 
or spirit in the world, I have done nothing towards the discarding substance out 
of the reasonable part of the world. Nay, as long as there is any simple idea or 
sensible quality left, according to my way of arguing, substance cannot be discard- 
ed; because all simple ideas, all sensible qualities, carry with them a supposition of 
a substratum to exist in, and of a substance wherein they inhere : and of this that 
whole chapter is so full, that I challenge any one who reads it, to think I have 
almost, or one jot, discarded substance out of the reasonable part of the world. 
And of this, man, horse, sun, water, iron, diamond, &c. which I have mentioned 
of distinct sorts of substances, will be my witnesses, as long as any such things 
remain in being ; of which I say f, " That the ideas of substances are such com- 
binations of simple ideas as are taken to represent distinct particular things sub- 
sisting by themselves, in which the opposed or confused idea of substance is 
always the first and chief." 

If, by almost discarding substance out of the reasonable part of the world, your 
lordship means, that I have destroyed, and almost discarded the true idea we have 
of it, by calling it a substratum^, a supposition of we know not what support of 
such qualities as are capable of producing simple ideas in us, an obscure and re- 
lative idea§, That without knowing what it is, it is that which supports accidents ; 
so that of substance we have no idea of what it is, but only a confused, obscure 
one of what it does : I must confess, this and the like I have said of our idea of 
substance: and should be very glad to be convinced by your lordship, or anybody 
else, that I have spoken too meanly of it. He that would show me a more clear 
and distinct idea of substance, would do me a kindness I should thank him for. 
But this is the best I can hitherto find, either in my own thoughts, or in the books 
of logicians; for their account or idea of it is that it is ens, or, res per se subsiste?is, 
et subsians accidentibus ; which in effect is no more, but that substance is a being 
or thing ; or, in short, something, they know not what, or of which they have no 
clearer idea, than that it is something which supports accidents, or other simple 
ideas or modes, and is not supported itself, as a mode or an accident. So that I 
do not see but Burgersdicius, Sanderson, and the whole tribe of logicians, must 
be reckoned with the gentlemen of this new way of reasoning, who have almost 
discarded substance out of the reasonable part of the world. 

But supposing, my lord, that I, or these gentlemen, logicians of note in the 
schools, should own that we have a very imperfect, obscure, inadequate idea of 
substance, would it not be a little too hard to charge us with discarding substance 
out of the world ? For what almost discarding, and reasonable part of the world, 
signifies, I must confess, I do not clearly comprehend : but let almost and reason- 
able part signify here what they will, for I dare say your lordship meant some- 
thing by them; would not your lordship think you were a little hardly dealt 
with, if, for acknowledging yourself to have a very imperfect and inadequate 

* B. 2, C. 23, Sec. 22. f B. 2, C. 12, Sec. 6. 

% B. 2, C. 23, Sec. 1, Sec.2, Sec. 3. § B. 2, C. 13, Sec. 19. 



Ch. 23. OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 187 

gether, and are therefore supposed to flow from the particular internal 
constitution, or unknown essence of that substance. Thus we come to 
have the ideas of a man, horse, gold, water, &c. of which substances, 
whether any one has any other clear idea, farther than of certain simple 

idea of God, or of several other things, which in this very treatise you confess our 
understandings come short in, and cannot comprehend, you should be accused to 
be one of these gentlemen, that have almost discarded God, or those other myste- 
rious things, whereof you contend we have very imperfect and inadequate ideas, 
out of the reasonable world ? For I suppose your lordship means, by almost dis- 
carding out of the reasonable world, something that is blamable, for it seems 
not to be inserted for a commendation ; and yet I think he deserves no blame 
who owns the having imperfect, inadequate, obscure ideas, where he has no better; 
however, if it be inferred from thence, that either he almost excludes those things 
out of being, or out of rational discourse, if that be meant by the reasonable 
world ; for the first of these will not hold, because the being of things in the 
world depends not on our ideas : the latter indeed is true in some degree, but it is 
no fault; for it is certain, that where we have imperfect, inadequate, confused, 
obscure ideas, we cannot discourse and reason about those things so well, fully, 
and clearly, as if we had perfect, adequate, clear and distinct ideas. 

Other objections are made against the following parts of this paragraph by that 
reverend prelate, viz. The repetition of the story of the Indian philosopher, and 
the talking like children about substance : to which our author replies : 

Your lordship, I must own, with great reason, takes notice that I paralleled 
more than once our idea of substance with the Indian philosopher's he-fcne - 
not-what, which supported the tortoise, &c. 

This repetition is, I confess, a fault in exact writing : but I have acknowledged 
and excused it in these words in my preface: " I am not ignorant how little I 
herein consult my own reputation, when I knowingly let my essay go with a 
fault so apt to disgust the most judicious, who are always the nicest readers." 
And there farther add, " That I did not publish my essay for such great masters 
of knowledge as your lordship ; but fitted it to men of my own size, to whom re- 
petitions might be sometimes useful." It would not therefore have been beside 
your lordship's generosity (who were not intended to be provoked by this repe- 
tition) to have passed by such a fault as this, in one who pretends not beyond the 
lower rank of writers. But I see your lordship would have me exact, and with- 
out any faults ; and I wish I could be so, the better to deserve your lordship's 
approbation. 

My saying, "That when we talk of substance, we talk like children ; who 
being asked a question about something which they know not, readily give this sa- 
tisfactory answer, That it is something ;" your lordship seems mightily to lay it to 
heart in these words that follow : " If this be the truth of the case, we must still 
talk like children, and I know not how it can be remedied. For if we cannot 
come at a rational idea of substance, we can have no principle of certainty to go 
upon in this debate. " 

Tfyour lordship has any better and distincter idea of substance than mine is, 
which I have given an account of, your lordship is not at all concerned in what I 
have there said. But those whose idea of substance, whether a rational or not ra- 
tional idea, is like mine, something, they know not what, must in that, with me, talk 
like children, when they speak of something, they know not what. For a philoso- 
pher that says, that which supports accidents, is something, he knows not what ; 
and a countryman that says, the foundation of the great church at Haarlem is sup- 
ported by something, he knows not what ; and a child that stands in the dark 
upon his mother's muff, and says he stands upon something, he knows not what, 
in this respect talk all three alike. But if the countryman knows that the foun- 
dation of the church of Haarlem is supported by a rock, as the houses about Bris- 
tol are ; or by gravel, as the houses about London are ; or by wooden piles, as 
the houses in Amsterdam are ; it is plain, that then having a clear and distinct 
idea of the thing that supports the church, he does not talk of this matter as a 
child j nor will he of the support of accidents, when he has a clearer and more 



188 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

ideas co-existing" together, I appeal to every one's own experience. It is 
the ordinary qualities observable in iron, or a diamond, put together, that 
make the true complex idea of those substances, which a smith or a jewel- 
ler commonly knows better than a philosopher; who, whatever substantial 
forms he may talk of, has no other idea of those substances than what is .fram- 
ed by a collection of those simple ideas which are to be found in them : only 
we must take notice, that our complex ideas of substances, besides all those 
simple ideas they are made up of, have always the confused idea of some- 
thing to which they belong, and in which they subsist. And, therefore, 
when we speak of any sort of substance, we say it is a thing having such 
or such qualities ; as body is a thing- that is extended, figured, and capable 

distinct idea of it, than that it is barely something. But as long as we think like 
children, incases where our ijlcas are no clearer nor distincter than theirs, I agree 
with your lordship, that I know not how it can be remedied, but that we must talk 
like them. 

Farther, the bishop asks, Whether there be no difference between the bare 
being of a thing, and its subsistence by itself ? To which our author answers, 
Yes*. But what will that do to prove, that upon my principles, we can come to 
no certainty of reason, that there is any such thing as substance ? You seem by 
this question to conclude, that the idea of a thing that subsists by itself, is a clear 
and distinct idea of substance ; but I beg leave to ask, Is the idea of the manner 
of subsistence of a thing, the idea of the thing itself? If it be not, we may have a 
clear and distinct idea of the manner, and yet have none but a very obscure and 
confused one of the thing. For example ; I tell your lordship, that I know a 
thing that cannot subsist without a support, and I kn-ow another thing that does 
subsist without a support, and say no more of them ; can you, by having the 
clear and distinct ideas of having a support, and not having a support, say, that 
you have a clear and distinct idea of the thing that I know which has, and of the 
thing that I know which has not a support ? If your lordship can, I beseech you to 
give me the clear and distinct ideas of these, which I only call by the general 
name, things that have or have not supports : for such there are, and such I shall 
give your lordship clear and distinct ideas of, when you shall please to call upon 
me for them ; though I think your lordship will scarce find them by the general 
and confused idea of things, nor in the clearer and more distinct idea of having 
or not having a support. 

To show a blind man that he has no clear and distinct idea of scarlet, I tell 
him, that his notion of it, that it is a thing or being, does not prove he has any 
clear or distinct idea of it ; but barely that he takes it to be something, he knows 
not what — he replies, that he knows more than that, v. g. he knows that it sub- 
sists, or inheres in another thing : and is there no difference, says he, in your lord- 
ship's words, between the bare being of a thing, and its subsistence in another ? 
Yes, say I to him, a great deal, they are very different ideas. But for all that, 
you have no clear and distinct idea of scarlet, nor such a one as I have, who see 
and know it, and have no other kind of idea of it, besides that of inherence. 

Your lordship has the idea of subsisting by itself, and therefore you conclude, 
you have a clear and distinct idea of the thing that subsits by itself: which, me- 
thinks, is all one, as if your countryman should say, he hath an idea of the cedar of 
Lebanon, that it is a tree of a nature to need no prop to lean on for its support ; 
therefore he hath a clear and distinct idea of a cedar of Lebanon : which clear 
and distinct idea, when he comes to examine, is nothing but a general one of a 
tree, with which his indetermined idea of a cedar is confounded. Just so is the 
idea of substance ; which, however called clear and distinct, is confounded with 
the general indetermined idea of something. But suppose that the manner of 
subsisting by itself gives us a clear and distinct idea of substance, how does that 
prove, that upon my principles we can come to no certainty of reason, that 
there is any such thing as substance in the world ? Which is the proposition to 
be proved. 

* Mr Lock's third letter. 



Ch. 23. OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 18 

of motion ; spirit, a thing capable of thinking ; and so hardness, friabil- 
ity, and power to draw iron, we say, are qualities to be found in a load- 
stone. These, and the like fashions of speaking, intimate that the sub- 
stance is supposed always something besides the extension, figure, solidity, 
motitn, thinking, or other observable ideas, though we know not what 
it is. 

Sect. 4. No clear idea of substance in general. — Hence, when we talk 
or think of any particular sort of corporeal substances, as horse, stone, &c. 
though the idea we have of either of them be but the complication or col- 
lection of those several simple ideas of sensible qualities, which we use to 
find united in the thing called horse or stone ; yet because we cannot con- 
ceive how they should subsist alone, nor one in another, we suppose them 
existing in, and supported by, some common subject ; which support we 
denote by the name substance, though it be certain we have no clear or dis- 
tinct idea of that thing we suppose a support. 

Sect. 5. As clear an idea of spirit as body. — The same happens con- 
cerning the operations of the mind, viz. thinking, reasoning, fearing, &c. 
which we, concluding not to subsist of themselves, nor apprehending how 
they can belong to body, or be produced by it, we are apt to think these the 
actions of some other substance, which we call spirit : whereby yet it is 
evident, that having no other idea or notion of matter, but something 
wherein those many sensible qualities which affect our senses, do subsist; 
by supposing a substance, wherein thinking, knowing, doubting, and a 
power of moving, &c. do subsist, we have as clear a notion of the substance 
of spirit, as we have of body ; the one being supposed to be (without know- 
ing what it is) the substratum to those simple ideas we have from without ; 
and the other supposed (with a like ignorance of what it is) to beihe substra- 
tum to those operations we experiment in ourselves within. It is plain, then, 
that the idea of corporeal substance in matter, is as remote from our con- 
ceptions and apprehensions, as that of spiritual substance or spirit : and 
therefore, from our not having any notion of the substance of spirit, we can 
no more conclude its non-existence, than we can, for the same reason, deny 
the existence of body; it being as rational to affirm there is no body, because 
we have no clear and distinct idea of the substance of matter, as to say 
there is no spirit, because we have no clear and distinct idea of the substance 
of a spirit. 

Sect. 6. Of the sorts of substances. — Whatever, therefore, bethe secret 
abstract nature of substance in general, all the ideas we have of particular 
distinct sorts of substances are nothing but several combinations of simple 
ideas, coexisting in such, though unknown, cause of their union, as makes 
the whole subsist of itself. It is by such combinations of simple ideas, and 
nothing else, that we represent particular sorts of substances to ourselves ; 
such are the ideas we have of their several species in our minds; and such 
only do we, by their specific names, signify to others, v. g. man, horse, 
sun, water, iron: upon hearing which words, every one who understands 
the language, frames in his mind a combination of those several simple 
ideas which he has usually observed, or fancied to exist together under that 
denomination ; all which he supposes to rest in, and be, as it were, adherent 
to that unknown common subject, which inheres not in any thing else. 
Though, in the mean time, it be manifest, and every one upon inquiry into 
his own thoughts will find, that he has no other idea of any substance, v. g. 
let it be gold, horse, iron, man, vitriol, bread, but what he has barely of 
those sensible qualities which he supposes to inhere, with a supposition 
of such a substratum, as gives, as it were, a support to those qualities or 
simple ideas which he has observed to exist united together. Thus, the 
idea of the sun, what is it but an aggregate of those several simple ideas, 
bright, hot, roundish, having a constant regular motion, at a certain dis- 
tance from us, and perhaps some other 1 as he who thinks and discourses 



190 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

of the sun, has been more or less accurate in observing those sensible 
qualities, ideas, or properties, which are in that thing which he calls the 
sun. 

Sect. 7. Power a great part of our complex ideas of substance. — For 
he has the perfectest idea of any of the particular sorts of substances., who 
has gathered and put together most of those simple ideas which do exist 
in it, among which are to be reckoned its active powers and passive capa- 
cities ; which, though not simple ideas, yet, in this respect, for brevity's sake, 
may conveniently enough be reckoned among them. Thus, the power of 
drawing iron is one of the ideas of the complex one of that substance we 
call a loadstone ; and a power to be so drawn, is a part of the complex 
one we call iron : which powers pass for inherent qualities in those subjects. 
Because every substance, being as apt, by the powers we observe in it, to 
change some sensible qualities in other subjects, as it is to produce in us 
those simple ideas which we receive immediately from it, does, by those 
new sensible qualities introduced into other subjects, discover to us those 
powers which do thereby mediately affect our senses, as regularly as its sen- 
sible qualities do it immediately, v. g. we immediately, by our senses, 
perceive in fire its heat and colour : winch are, if rightly considered, noth- 
ing but powers in it to produce those ideas in us ; we also, by our senses, 
perceive the colour and brittleness of charcoal, whereby we come by the 
knowledge of another power in fire, which it has to change the colour and 
consistency of wood. By the former fire immediately, by the latter it 
modiately discovers to us these several qualities, which therefore we look 
upon to be a part of the qualities of fire, and so make them a part of the 
complex idea of it. For all those powers that we take cognizance of, ter- 
minating only in the alteration of some sensible qualities in thore subjects 
on which they operate, and so making them exhibit to us new sensible 
ideas : therefore it is that I have reckoned these powers among the simple 
ideas, which make the complex ones of the sorts of substances ; though 
these powers, considered in themselves, are truly complex ideas. And 
in this looser sense I crave leave to be understood, when I name any of 
these potentialities among the simple ideas, which we recollect in our minds, 
when we think of particular substances. For the powers that are severally 
in them are necessary to be considered, if we will have true distinct notions 
of the several sorts of substances. 

Sect. 8. And why. — Nor are we to wonder, that powers make a great 
part of our complex ideas of substances ; since their secondary qualities are 
those, which in most of them serve principally to distinguish substances 
one from another, and commonly make a considerable part of the complex 
idea of the several sorts of them. For our senses failing us in the discovery 
of the bulk, texture, and figure of the minute parts of bodies, on which their 
real constitutions and differences depend, we are fain to make use of their 
secondary qualities, as the characteristical notes and marks whereby to frame 
ideas of them in our minds, and distinguish them one from another. All 
which secondary qualities, as has been shown, are nothing but bare powers 
For the colour and taste of opium are, as well as its soporific or anodyne 
virtues, mere powers depending on its primary qualities, whereby it is fitted 
to produce different operations on different parts of our bodies. 

Sect. 9. Three sorts of ideas make our complex ones of substances. — 
The ideas that make our complex ones of corporeal substances are of these 
three sorts. First, the ideas of the primary qualities of things, which are 
discovered by our senses, and are in them even when we perceive them not ; 
such are the bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion of the parts of bodies, 
which are really in them, whether we take notice of them or no. Secondly, 
the sensible secondary qualities, which depending on these, are nothing but 
the powers those substances have to produce several ideas in us by our 
senses ; which ideas are not in the things themselves, otherwise than as 



Ch. 23. OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 191 

any thing is in its cause. Thirdly, the aptness we consider in any substance 
to give or receive such alterations of primary qualities, as that the substance 
so altered should produce in us different ideas from what it did before ; these 
are called active and passive powers; all which powers, as far as we have any 
notice or notion of them, terminate only in sensible simple ideas. For 
whatever alteration a loadstone has the power to make in the minute par- 
ticles of iron, we should have no notion of any power it had at all to operate 
on iron, did not its sensible motion discover it: and I doubt not but there 
are a thousand changes, that bodies we daily handle have a power to cause 
in one another, which we never suspect, because they never appear in sen- 
sible effects. 

Sect. 10. Powers make a great part of our complex ideas of substances. 
— Powers therefore justly make a great part of our complex ideas of sub- 
stances. He that will examine his complex idea of gold, will find several 
of its ideas that make it up to be only powers, as the power of being melted, 
but of not spending itself in the fire ; of being dissolved in aqua regia ; are 
ideas as necessary to make up our complex idea of gold, as its colour and 
weight : which, if duly considered, are also nothing but different powers. 
For to speak truly, yellowness is not actually in gold ; but is a power in 
gold to produce that idea in us by our eyes, when placed in a due light : anc 
the heat which we cannot leave out of our ideas of the sun, is no more real- 
ly in the sun, than the white colour it introduces into wax. These are both 
equally powers in the sun, operating, by the motion and figure of its sensi- 
ble parts, so on a man, as to make him have the idea of heat ; and so on 
wax, as to make it capable to produce in a man the idea of white. 

Sect. 11. The new secondary qualities of bodies would disappear, if 
we could discover the primary ones of their minute parts. — Had we senses 
acute enough to discern the minute particles of bodies, and the real consti- 
tution on which their sensible qualities depend, I doubt not but they would 
produce quite different ideas in us ; and that which is now the yellow colour 
of gold would then disappear, and instead of it we should see an admirable 
texture of parts of a certain size and figure. This microscopes plainly dis- 
cover to us ; for what to our naked eyes produces a certain colour, is, by 
thus augmenting the acuteness of our senses, discovered to be quite a dif- 
ferent thing ; and the thus altering, as it were, the proportion of the bulk 
of the minute parts of a coloured object to our usual sight, produces differ- 
ent ideas from what it did before. Thus sand or pounded glass, which is 
opaque, and white to the naked eye, is pellucid in a microscope ; and a hair 
seen this way loses its former colour, and is in a great measure pellucid, 
with a mixture of some bright sparkling colours, such as appear from the 
refraction of diamonds, and other pellucid bodies. Blood to the naked eye 
appears all red ; but by a good microscope, wherein its lesser parts ap- 
pear, shows only some few globules of red, swimming in a pellucid liquor : 
and how these red globules would appear, if glasses could be found that 
could yet magnify them a thousand or ten thousand times more, is uncer- 
tain. 

Sect. 12. Our faculties of discovery suited to our state. — The infinitely 
wise contriver of us, and all things about us, hath fitted our senses, facul- 
ties and organs to the conveniences of life, and the business we have to do 
here. We are able, by our senses, to know and distinguish things : and 
to examine them so far, as to apply them to our uses, and several ways to 
accommodate the exigencies of this life. We have insight enough into 
their admirable contrivances and wonderful effects, to admire and magnify 
the wisdom, power, and goodness of their author. Such a knowledge as 
this, which is suited to our present condition, we want not faculties to at- 
tain. But it appears not that God intended we should have a perfect, clear, 
and adequate knowledge of them: that perhaps is not in the comprehension 
of any finite being. We are furnished with faculties, (dull and weak as they 



192 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

are) to discover enough in the creatures, to lead us to the knowledge of the 
Creator, and the knowledge of our duty ; and we are fitted well enough with 
abilities to provide for the conveniences of living: these are our business 
in this world. But were our senses altered, and made much quicker and 
acuter, the appearance and outward scheme of things would have quite 
another face to us ; and, I am apt to think, would be inconsistent with our 
being, or at least well-being, in this part of the universe which we inhabit. 
He that considers how little our constitution is able to bear a remove into 
>arts of this air, not much higher than that we commonly breathe in, wilt 
nave reason to be satisfied that in this globe of earth allotted for our mansion 
the ail-wise Architect has suited our organs, and the bodies that are to af- 
fect them, one to another. If our sense of hearing were but one thousand 
imes quicker than it is, how would a perpetual noise distract us ! And we 
.should in the quietest retirement be less able to sleep or mediate, than in 
the middle of a sea-fight. Nay, if that most instructive of our senses, 
seeing, were in any man a thousand or an hundred thousand times more 
acute than it is by the best microscope, things several millions of times less 
than the smallest object of his sight now would then be visible to his naked 
eyes, and so he would come nearer to the discovery of the texture and mo- 
tion of the minute parts of corporeal things ; and in many of them, probably, 
get ideas of their internal constitutions. But then he would be in a quite 
different world from other people ; nothing would appear the same to him 
and others ; the' visible ideas of every thing would be different. So that I 
doubt whether he and the rest of men could discourse concerning the ob- 
jects of sight, or have any communication about colours, their appearances 
being so wholly different. And perhaps such a quickness and tenderness 
of sight could not endure bright sunshine, or so much as open daylight ; nor 
take in but a very small part of any object at once, and that too only at a very 
near distance. And if by the help of such microscopical eyes (if I may so 
call them) a man could penetrate farther than ordinary into the secret composi- 
tion and radical texture of bodies, he would not make any great advantage by 
the change, if such an acute sight would not serve to conduct him to the 
market and exchange ; if he could not see things he was to avoid at a con- 
venient distance, nor distinguish things he had to do with by those sensible 
qualities others do. He that was sharp-sighted enough to see the configu- 
ration of the minute particles of the spring of a clock, and observe upon 
what peculiar structure and impulse its elastic motion depends, would no 
doubt discover something very admirable ; but if eyes so framed could not 
view at once the hand and the characters of the hour-plate, and thereby at 
a distance see what o'clock it was, their owner could not be much benefited 
by that acuteness ; which, whilst it discovered the secret contrivance of the 
parts of the machine, made him lose its use. 

Sect. 13. Conjecture about spirits. — And here give me leave to propose 
an extravagant conjecture of mine, viz. that since we have some reason (if 
there be any credit to be given to the report of things that our philosophy 
cannot account for) to imagine that spirits can assume to themselves bodies 
of different bulk, figure, and conformation of parts ; whether one great ad- 
vantage some of them have over us may not lie in this, that they can so 
frame and shape to themselves organs of sensation or perception as to suit 
them to their present design, and the circumstances of the object they 
would consider. For how much would that man exceed all others in know- 
ledge, who had but the faculty so to order the structure of his eyes, that one 
sense, as to make it capable of all the several degrees of vision which the 
assistance of glasses (casually at first lighted on) has taught us to conceive • 
What wonders would he discover, who could so fit his eyes to all sorts of 
objects, as to see, when he pleased, the figure and motion of the minute par- 
ticles in the blood, and other juices of animals, as distinctly as he does, at 
other times, the shape and motion of the animals themselves"? But to us, 



Ch. 23. OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 193 

in our present state, unalterable organs so contrived as to discover the figure 
and motion of the minute parts of bodies, whereon depend those sensible 
qualities we now observe in them, would perhaps be of no advantage. God 
has, no doubt, made them so as is best for us in our present condition. He 
hath fitted us for the neighbourhood of the bodies that surround us, and we 
have to do with : and though we cannot, by the faculties we have, attain to 
a perfect knowledge of things, yet they will serve us well enough for those 
ends above mentioned, which are our great concernment. I beg my reader's 
pardon for laying before him so wild a fancy, concerning the ways of percep- 
tion in beings above us ; but how extravagant soever it be, I doubt whether 
we can imagine any thing about the knowledge of angels, but after this man- 
ner, some way or other, in proportion to what we find and observe in our- 
selves. And though we cannot but allow, that the infinite power and wisdom 
of God may frame creatures with a thousand other faculties and ways of 
perceiving things without them than what we have, yet our thoughts can 
go no farther than our own ; so impossible it is for us to enlarge our very 
guesses beyond the ideas received from our own sensation and reflection. 
The supposition, at least, that angels do sometimes assume bodies, needs 
not startle us ; since some of the most ancient and most learned fathers of 
the church seemed to believe that they had bodies : and this is certain, that 
their state and way of existence is unknown to us. 

Sect. 14. Complex ideas of substances. — But to return to the matter in 
hand ; the ideas we have of substances, and the ways we come by them, — 
I say, our specific ideas of substances are nothing else but a collection of a 
certain number of simple ideas, considered as united in one thing. These 
ideas of substances, though they are commonly simple apprehensions, and 
the names of them simple terms, yet in effect are complex and compounded. 
Thus the idea which an Englishman signifies by the name swan, is white 
colour, long neck, red beak, black legs, and whole feet, and all these of a 
certain size, with a power of swimming in the water, and making a certain 
kind of noise : and perhaps, to a man who has long observed this kind of 
birds, some other properties which all terminate in sensible simple ideas, 
all united in one common subject. 

Sect 15. Idea of spiritual substances as clear as of bodily substances. 
— Besides the complex ideas we have of material sensible substances, of 
which I have last spoken, by the simple ideas we have taken from those 
operations of our own minds which we experiment daily in ourselves, as 
thinking, understanding, willing, knowing, and power of beginning mo- 
tion, &c. co-existing in some substance ; we are able to frame the complex 
idea of an immaterial spirit. And thus, by putting together the ideas of 
thinking, perceiving, liberty, and power of moving themselves and other 
things, we have as clear a perception and notion of immaterial substances as 
we have of material. For putting together the ideas of thinking and willing, 
or the power of moving or quieting corporeal motion, joined to substance, of 
which we have no distinct idea, we have the idea of an immaterial spirit 
and by putting together the ideas of coherent solid parts, and a power of* 
being moved, joined with substance, of which likewise we have no positive 
idea, we have the idea of matter. The one is as clear and distinct an idea 
as the other : the idea of thinking, and moving a body, being as clear and 
distinct ideas as the ideas of extension, solidity, and being moved: for our 
idea of substance is equally obscure, or none at all in both ; it is but a sup- 
posed I know not what, to support those ideas we call accidents. It is for 
want of reflection that we are apt to think that our senses show us nothing 
but material things. Every act of sensation, when duly considered, gives 
us an equal view of both parts of nature, the corporeal and spiritual. For 
whilst I know, by seeing or hearing, &c. that there is some corporeal being 
without me, the object of that sensation; I do more certainly know, that 
there is some spiritual being within me that sees and hears. This, I must 
Z 



194 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

be convinced, cannot be the action of bare insensible matter; nor ever could 
be, without an immaterial thinking being. 

Sect. 16. No idea of abstract substance. — By the complex idea of ex- 
tended, figured, coloured, and all other sensible qualities, which is all that 
we know of it, we are as far from the idea of the substance of body as if 
we knew nothing at all : nor after all the acquaintance and familiarity which 
we imagine we have with matter, and the many qualities men assure them- 
selves they perceive and know in bodies, will it perhaps upon examination 
be found, that they have any more or clearer primary ideas belonging to 
body, than they have belonging to immaterial spirit. 

Sect. 17. The cohesion of solid parts and impulse of primary ideas of 
body. — The primary ideas we have peculiar to body, as contradistinguished 
to spirit, are the cohesion of solid, and consequently separable, parts, and 
a power of communicating motion by impulse. These, I think, are the 
original ideas proper and peculiar to body ; for figure is but the consequence 
of finite extension. 

Sect. 18. Thinking and motivity the primary ideas of spirit. — The ideas 
we have belonging and peculiar to spirit are thinking and will, or a power 
of putting body into motion by thought, and, which is consequent to it, liberty. 
For as body cannot but communicate its motion by impulse to another body, 
which it meets with at rest, so the mind can put bodies into motion, or 
forbear to do so, as it pleases. The ideas of existence, duration, and mo- 
bility, are common to them both. 

Sect. 19. Spirits capable of motion. — There is no reason why it should 
be thought strange, that I make mobility belong to spirit : for having no 
other idea of motion but change of distance with other beings that are con- 
sidered as at rest, — and finding that spirits, as well as bodies, cannot ope- 
rate but where they are, and that spirits do operat-e at several times in several 
places, — I cannot but attribute change of place to all finite spirits (for of the 
infinite spirit I speak not here). For my soul being a real being, as well as 
my body, is certainly as capable of changing distance with any other body, or 
oeing, as body itself, and so is capable of motion. And if a mathematician can 
consider a certain distance, or a change of that distance between two points, 
one may certainly conceive a distance and a change of distance between two 
spirits ; and so conceive their motion, their approach or removal, one from 
another. 

Sect. 20. Every one finds in himself, that his soul can think, will, and 
operate on his body in the place where that is ; but cannot operate on a body 
or in a place an hundred miles distant from it. Nobody can imagine that 
/lis soul can think or move a body at Oxford, whilst he is at London ; and 
cannot but know, that, being united to his body, it constantly changes place 
all the whole journey between Oxford and London, as the coach or horse 
does that carries him, and I think may be said to be truly all that while in 
motion ; or if that will not be allowed to afford us a clear idea enough of 
its motion, its being separated from the body in death, I think, will ; for to 
consider it as going out of the body, or leaving it, and yet to have no idea 
of its motion, seems to me impossible. 

Sect. 21. If it be said by any one that it cannot change place, because 
it hath none, for spirits are not in loco, but ubi ; I suppose that way of 
talking will not now be of much weight to many, in an age that is not much 
disposed to admire or suffer themselves to be deceived by such unintelligible 
ways of speaking. But if any one thinks there is any sense in that distinc- 
tion, and that it is applicable to our present purpose, I desire him to put it 
into intelligible English ; and then from thence draw a reason to show that 
immaterial spirits are not capable of motion. Indeed motion cannot be attri- 
buted to God ; not because he is an immaterial, but because he is an infinite 
spirit. 

Sect. 22. Idea of soul and body compared. — Let us compare then our 
«omplex idea of an immaterial spirit with our complex idea of body, and see 



Ch. 23. OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 195 

whether there be any more obscurity in one than in the other, and in which 
most. Our idea of body, as I think, is an extended solid substance, ca- 
pable of communicating motion by impulse ; and our idea of soul, as an im- 
material spirit, is of a substance that thinks, and has a power of exciting 
motion in body, by willing or thought. These, I think, are our complex 
ideas of soul and body, as contradistinguished ; and now let us examine 
which has most obscurity in it, and difficulty to be apprehended. I know 
that people, whose thoughts are immersed in matter, and have so subjected 
their minds to their senses, that they seldom reflect on any thing beyond 
them, are apt to say, they cannot comprehend a thinking thing, which per- 
haps is true : but I affirm, when they consider it well, they can no more 
comprehend an extended thing. 

Sect. 23. Cohesion of solid parts in body as hard to be conceived as 
thinking in a soul. — If any one say, he knows not what it is thinks in him, he 
means he knows not what the substance is of that thinking thing : no more, 
say I, knows he what the substance is of that solid thing. Farther, if he 
says he knows not how he thinks, I answer, neither knows he how he is 
extended ; how the solid parts of body are united, or cohere together to 
make extension. Forthough the pressure of the particles of air may account 
for the cohesion of several parts of matter, that are grosser than the parti- 
cles of air, and have pores less than corpuscles of air, — yet the weight or 
pressure of the air will not explain, nor can be a cause of the coherence 
of the particles of air themselves. And if the pressures of the ether, or 
any subtiler matter than the air, may unite, and hold fast together the 
parts of a particle of air, as well as other bodies ; yet it cannot make 
bonds for itself, and hold together the parts that make up every the 
least corpuscle of that materia subtilis. So that the hypothesis, how in- 
geniously soever explained, by showing that the parts of sensible bodies are 
held together by the pressure of other external insensible bodies, reaches 
not the parts of the ether itself; and by how much the more evident it proves 
that the parts of other bodies are held together by the external pressure of 
the ether, and can have no other conceivable cause of their cohesion and 
union, by so much the more it leaves us in the dark concerning the cohe- 
sion of the parts of the corpuscles of the ether itself; which we can neither 
conceive without parts, they being bodies, and divisible, nor yet how their 
parts cohere, they wanting that cause of cohesion, which is given of the co- 
hesion of the parts of all other bodies. 

Sect. 24. But, in truth, the pressure of any ambient fluid, how great so- 
ever, can be no intelligible cause of the cohesion of the solid parts of mat- 
ter. For though such a pressure may hinder the avulsion of two polished 
superficies, one from another, in a line perpendicular to them, as in the ex- 
periment of two polished marbles ; yet it can never, in the least, hinder the 
separation by a motion, in a line parallel to those surfaces ; because the 
ambient fluid, having a full liberty to succeed in each point of space, desert- 
ed by a laterial motion, resists such a motion of bodies so joined no more 
than it would resist the motion of that body, were it on all sides environed 
by that fluid, and touched no other body : and, therefore, if there were no 
other cause of cohesion, all parts of bodies must be easily separable by such 
a laterial sliding motion. For if the pressure of the ether be the adequate 
cause of cohesion, wherever that cause operates not, there can be no cohe- 
sion. And since it cannot operate against such a lateral separation (as has 
been shown,) therefore in every imaginary plane, intersecting any mass of 
matter, there could be no more cohesion than of two polished surfaces, 
which will always, notwithstanding any imaginable pressure of a fluid, easi- 
ly slide one from another. So that, perhaps, how clear an idea soever we 
think we have of the extension of body, which is nothing but the cohesion 
of solid parts, he that shall well consider it in his mind may have reason to 
conclude, that it is as easy for him to have a clear idea how the soul 
.hinks, as how body is extended. For since body is no farther nor other- 



f96 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2, 

wise extended than by the union and cohesion of its solid parts, we shaL 
very ill comprehend the extension of body, without understanding wherein 
consists the union and cohesion of its parts ; which seems to me as incom- 
prehensible as the manner of thinking, and how it is performed. 

Sect. 25. I allow it is usual for most people to wonder how any one 
should find a difficulty in what they think they every day observe. Do we 
not see, will they be ready to say, the parts of bodies stick firmly together) 
Is there any thing more common ] And what doubt can there be made of 
it ] And the like, I say, concerning thinking and voluntary motion : do we 
not every moment experiment it in ourselves ; and therefore can it be doubt- 
ed 1 The matter of fact is clear, I confess ; but when we would a little nearer 
look into it, and consider how it is done, there I think we are at a loss, both 
in the one and the other ; and can as little understand how the parts of body 
cohere, as how we ourselves perceive, or move. I would have any one in- 
telligibly explain to me how the parts of gold, or brass (that but now in 
fusion were as loose from one another as the particles of water or the 
sands of an hour glass,) come in a few moments to. be so united, and 
adhere so strongly one to another, that the utmost force of men's arms cannot 
separate them : a considering man will, I suppose, be here at a loss to satis- 
fy his own, or another man's understanding. 

Sect. 26. The little bodies that compose that fluid we call water are so 
extremely small, that I have never heard of any one, who by a microscope 
(and yet I have heard of some that have magnified to ten thousand, nay, 
to much above a hundred thousand times) pretended to perceive their 
distinct bulk, figure, or motion : and the particles of water are also so per- 
fectly losse one from another, that the least force sensibly separates them. 
Nay, if we consider their perpetual motion, we must allow them to have no 
cohesion one with another; and yet let but a sharp cold come, they unite, 
they consolidate, these little atoms cohere, and are not, without great force, 
separable. He that could find the bonds that tie these heaps of loose little bo- 
dies together so firmly; he that could make known the cement that makes them 
stick so fast one to another ; would discover a great and yet unknown 
secret : and yet, when that was done, would he be far enough from making 
the extension of body (which is the cohesion of its solid parts) intelligible, 
till he could show wherein consisted the union or consolidation of the parts 
of those bonds, or of that cement, or of the least particle of matter that exists. 
Whereby it appears, that this primary and supposed obvious quality of body 
will be found, when examined, to be as incomprehensible as any thing belong- 
ingtoour minds, and a solid extended substance as hard to be conceived as a 
thinking immaterial one, whatever difficulties some would raise against it. 

Sect. 27. For, to extend our thoughts a little farther, that pressure, which 
is brought to explain the cohesion of bodies, is as unintelligible as the cohe- 
sion itself. For if matter be considered, as no doubt it is, finite, let any one 
send his contemplation to the extremities of the universe, and there see 
what conceivable hoops, what bond he can imagine to hold this mass of mat- 
ter in so close a pressure together; from whence steel has its firmness, and 
the parts of a diamond their hardness and indissolubility. If matter be finite, 
it must have its extremes; and there must be something to hinder it from scat- 
tering asunder. If, to avoid this difficulty, any one will throw himself into 
the supposition and abyss of infinite matter, let him consider what light he 
thereby brings to the cohesion of body, and whether he be ever the nearer 
making it intelligible by resolving it into a supposition the most absurd and 
most incomprehensible of all other: so far is our extension of body (which 
is nothing but the cohesion of solid parts) from being clearer, or more dis- 
tinct, when we would inquire into the nature, cause, or manner of it, than 
the idea of thinking. 

Sect. 28. Communication of motion by impulse, or by thought, equally 
intelligible. — Another idea we have of body is the power of communication 



Ch. 23. OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 197 

of motion by impulse ; and of our souls, the power of exciting motion by 
thought. These ideas, the one of body, the other of our minds, every- 
day 's experience clearly furnishes us with : but if here again we inquire 
how this is done, we are equally in the dark. For to the communication 
of motion by impulse, wherein as much motion is lost to one body as is 
got to the other, which is the most ordinary case, we can have no other 
conception but of the passing of motion out of one body into another ; which, 
I think, is as obscure and unconceivable, as how our minds move or 
stop our bodies by thought : which we every moment find they do. The 
increase of motion by impulse, which is observed or believed sometimes to 
happen, is yet harder to be understood. We have by daily experience 
clear evidence of motion produced both by impulse and by thought ; but 
the manner, how, hardly comes within our comprehension ; we are equally 
at a loss in both. So that however we consider motion, and its communica- 
tion, either from body or spirit, the idea which belongs to spirit is at least as 
clear as that which belongs to body. And if we consider the active power 
of moving, or as I may call it, motivity, it is much clearer in spirit than 
body ; since two bodies, placed by one another at rest, will never afford us 
the idea of a power in the one to move the other, but by a borrowed mo- 
tion ; whereas the mind, every day, affords us ideas of an active power of 
moving of bodies ; and therefore it is worth our consideration, whether ac- 
tive power be not the proper attribute of spirits, and passive power of mat- 
ter. Hence may be conjectured, that created spirits are not totally sepa- 
rate from matter, because they are both active and passive. Pure spirit, 
viz. God, is only active ; pure matter is only passive ; those beings that are 
both active and passive, we may judge to partake of both. But be that as 
it will, I think we have as many, and as clear ideas belonging to spirit as 
we have belonging to body, the substance of each being equally unknown 
to us ; and the idea of thinking in spirit as clear as of extension in body ; 
and the communication of motion by thought, which we attribute to spirit, 
is as evident as that by impulse, which we ascribe to body. Constant expe- 
rience makes us sensible of both these, though our narrow understandings 
can comprehend neither. For when the mind would look beyond those 
original ideas we have from sensation on reflection, and penetrate into 
their causes, and manner of production, we find still it discovers nothing 
but its own short-sightedness. 

Sect. 29. To conclude — sensation convinces us that there are solid ex- 
tended substances, and reflection, that there are thinking ones ; experience 
assures us of the existence of such beings, and that the one hath a power 
to move body by impulse, the other by thought; this we cannot doubt of. 
Experience, I say, every moment furnishes us with the clear ideas both of 
the one and the other. But beyond these ideas, as received from their 
proper sources, our faculties will not reach. If we would inquire farther 
into their nature, causes, and manner, we perceive not the nature of ex- 
tension clearer than we do of thinking. If we would explain them any 
farther, one is as easy as the other; and there is no more difficulty to con- 
ceive how a substance we know not should by thought set body into mo- 
tion, than how a substance we know not should by impulse set body into 
motion. So that we are no more able to discover wherein the ideas be- 
longing to body consist, than those belonging to spirit. From whence it 
seems probable to me, that the simple ideas we receive from sensation and 
reflection are the boundaries of our thoughts ; beyond which the mind, 
whatever efforts it would make, is not able to advance one jot; nor can it 
make any discoveries, when it would pry into the nature and hidden causes 
of those ideas. 

Sect. 30. Idea of spirit and body compared. — So that, in short, the 
idea we have of spirit, compared with the idea we have of body, stands 
thus: the substance of spirit is unknown to us; and so is the sub- 



198 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

stance of body equally unknown to us. Two primary qualities or proper- 
ties of body, viz. solid coherent parts and impulse, we have distinct clear 
ideas of: so likewise we know, and have distinct clear ideas of two primary 
qualities or properties of spirit, viz. thinking, and a power of action ; i. e. 
a power of beginning or stopping several thoughts or motions. We have 
also the ideas of several qualities, inherent in bodies, and have the clear 
distinct ideas of them ; which qualities are but the various modifications of 
the extension of cohering solid parts and their motion. We have likewise 
the ideas of the several modes of thinking, viz. believing, doubting, intending, 
fearing, hoping; all which are but the several modes of thinking. We have 
also the ideas of willing, and moving the body consequent to it, and with 
the body itself too ; for, as has been shown, spirit is capable of motion. 

Sect. 31. The notion of spirit involves no more difficulty in it than 
that of body. — Lastly, if this notion of immaterial spirit may have per- 
haps some difficulties in it not easy to be explained, we have therefore no 
more reason to deny or doubt the existence of such spirits, than we have 
to deny or doubt the existence of body ; because the notion of body is cum- 
bered with some difficulties very hard, and perhaps impossible to be ex- 
plained or understood by us. For I would fain have instanced any thing 
in our notion of spirit more perplexed, or nearer a contradiction, than the 
very notion of body includes in it : the divisibility in infinitum of any finite 
extension involving us, whether we grant or deny it, in consequences im- 
possible to be explicated or made in our apprehensions consistent : con- 
sequences that carry greater difficulty, and more apparent absurdity, than 
any thing that can follow from the notion of an immaterial knowing sub- 
stance. 

Sect. 32. We know nothing beyond our simple ideas. — Which we are 
not at all to wonder at, since we having but some few' superficial ideas of 
things, discovered to us only by the senses from without, or by the mind, 
reflecting on what it experiments in itself within, have no knowledge be- 
yond that, much less of the internal constitution and true nature of things, 
being destitute of faculties to attain it. And therefore experimenting and 
discovering in ourselves knowledge, and the power of voluntary motion, as 
certainly as we experiment or discover in things without us the cohesion 
and separation of solid parts, which is the extension and motion of bodies ; 
we have as much reason to be satisfied with our notion of immaterial spirit, 
as with our notion of body, and the existence of the one as well as the other. 
For it being no more a contradiction that thinking should exist, separate 
and independent from solidity, than it is a contradiction that solidity 
should exist separate and independent from thinking, they being both 
but simple ideas, independent one from another, — and having as clear 
and distinct ideas in us of thinking as of solidity, — I know not why 
we may not as well allow a thinking thing without solidity, i. e. im- 
material, to exist, as a solid thing without thinking, i. e. matter, to 
exist ; especially since it is not harder to conceive how thinking should 
exist without matter, than how matter should think. For whensoever 
we would proceed beyond these simple ideas we have from sensation and 
reflection, and dive farther into the nature of things, we fall presently into 
darkness and obscurity, perplexedness and difficulties ; and can discover 
nothing farther but our own blindness and ignorance. But whichever of 
these complex ideas be clearest, that of body or immaterial spirit, this is 
evident, that the simple ideas that make them up are no other than what 
we have received from sensation or reflection ; and so is it of all our other 
ideas of substances, even of God himself. 

Sect. 33. Idea of God. — For if we examine the idea we have of the in- 
comprehensible Supreme Being, we shall find, that we come by it the same 
way ; and that the complex ideas we have both of God and separate spirits, 
are made up of the simple ideas we receive from reflection ; v.g. having, 



On. 23. OUR IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 199 

from what we experiment in ourselves, got the ideas of existence and dura- 
tion ; of knowledge and power; of pleasure and happiness ; and of several 
other qualities and powers, which it is better to have than to be without ; 
when we would frame an idea the most suitable we can to the Supreme Be- 
ing, we enlarge every one of these with our idea of infinity ; and so putting 
them together, make our complex idea of God. For that the mind has such 
apower of enlarging some of its ideas, received from sensation and reflection, 
has been already shown. 

Sect. 34. If I find that I know some few things, and some of them, or 
all, perhaps, imperfectly, I can frame an idea of knowing twice as many; 
which I can double again, as often as I can add to number ; and thus enlarge 
my idea of knowledge, by extending its comprehension to all things exist- 
ing or possible. The same also I can do of knowing them more perfectly ; 
i. e. ail their qualities, powers, causes, consequences, and relations, &c. till 
all be perfectly known that is in them, or can any way relate to them ; and 
thus frame the idea of infinite or boundless knowledge. The same may al- 
so be done of power, till we come to that we call infinite : and also of the 
duration of existence, wkhout beginning or end; and so frame the idea of 
an eternal being. The degrees or extent wherein we ascribe existence, 
power, wisdom, and all other perfections (which we can have any ideas of) 
to that sovereign being which we call God, being all boundless and infinite, 
we frame the best idea of him our minds are capable of: all which is done, 
I say, by enlarging those simple ideas we have taken from the operations of 
our own minds by reflection, or by our senses from exterior things, to that 
vastness to which infinity can extend them. 

Sect. 35. Idea of God. — For it is infinity, which joined to our ideas of 
existence, power, knowledge, &c. makes that complex idea whereby we re- 
present to ourselves, the best we can, the Supreme Being. For though in 
his own essence (which certainly we do not know, not knowing the real 
essence of a pebble, or a fly, or of our own selves) God be simple and un- 
compounded ; yet, I think, I may say we have no other idea of him but a 
complex one of existence, knowledge, power, happiness, &c. infinite and 
eternal ; which are all distinct ideas, and some of them, being relative, are 
again compounded of others ; all which being, as has been shown, originally 
got from sensation and reflection, go to make up the idea or notion we have 
of God. 

Sect. 36. No idea in our complex one of spirits, but those got from 
sensation or reflection. — This farther is to be observed, that there is no 
idea we attribute to God, bating infinity, which is not also a part of our com- 
plex idea of other spirits. Because, being capable of no other simple ideas, 
belonging to any thing but body, but those which by reflection we receive 
from the operation of our minds, we can attribute to spirits no other but what 
we receive from thence : and all the difference we can put between them'in 
our contemplation of spirits, is only in the several extents and degrees of their 
knowledge, power, duration, happiness, &c. For that in our ideas, as well 
of spirits as of other things, we are restrained to those we receive from 
sensation and reflection, is evident from hence, that in our ideas of spirits, 
how much soever advanced in perfection beyond those of bodies, even to 
that of infinite, we cannot yet have any idea of the manner wherein they 
discover their thoughts one to another : though we must necessarily con- 
clude, that separate spirits, which are beings that have perfecter knowledge 
and greater happiness than we, must needs have also a perfecter way of 
communicating their thoughts than we have, who are fain to make use of 
corporeal signs and particular sounds ; which are therefore of most general 
use, as being the best and quickest we are capable of. But of immediate 
communication, having no experiment in ourselves, and consequently no 
notion of it at all, we have no idea how spirits, which use not words, can 
with quickness, or much less how spirits that have no bodies, can be 



200 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

masters of their own thoughts, and communicate or conceal them at plea- 
sure, though we cannot but necessarily suppose they have such a power. 

Sect. 37. Recapitulation. — And thus we have seen what kind of ideas 
we have of substances of all kinds, wherein they consist, and how we came 
by them. From whence, I think, it is very evident, 

First, that all our ideas of the several sorts of substances are nothing 
but collections of simple ideas, with a supposition of something to which 
they belong, and in which they subsist ; though of this supposed something 
we have no clear distinct idea at all. 

Secondly, that all the simple ideas, that thus united in one common sub- 
stratum make up our complex ideas of several sorts of substances, are no 
other but such as we have received from sensation or reflection. So that 
even in those which we think we are most intimately acquainted with, and 
that come nearest the comprehension of our most enlarged conceptions, we 
cannot go beyond those simple ideas. And even in those which seem most 
remote irom all we have to do with, and do infinitely surpass any thing we 
can perceive in ourselves by reflection, or discover by sensation in other 
things, we can attain to nothing but those simple ideas, which we original- 
ly received from sensation and reflection ; as is evident in the complex ideas 
we have of angels, and particularly of God himself. 

Thirdly, that most of the simple ideas that make up our complex ideas 
of substances, when truly considered, are only powers, however we are apt 
to take them for positive qualities; v.g. the greatest part of the ideas that 
make our complex idea of gold are yellowness, great weight, ductility, fusi- 
bility, and solubility in aqua regia, &c. all united together in an unknown 
substratum ; all which ideas are nothing else but so many relations to other 
substances, and are not really in the gold, considered barely in itself, though 
they depend on those real and primary qualities of its internal constitution, 
whereby it has a fitness differently to operate, and be operated on by several 
other substances. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

OF COLLECTIVE IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES; 

Sect. 1. One idea. — Besides these complex ideas of several single sub- 
stances, as of man, horse, gold, violet, apple, &c. the mind hath also com- 
plex collective ideas of substances ; which I so call, because such ideas 
are made up of many particular substances considered together, as united 
into one idea, and which so joined are looked on as one : v. g. the idea of 
such a collection of men as make an army, though consisting of a great 
number of distinct substances, is as much one idea as the idea of a man: 
and the great collective idea of all bodies whatsoever, signified by the name 
world, is as much one idea as the idea of any the least particle of matter 
in it ; it sufficing to the unity of any idea that it be considered as one repre- 
sentation or picture, though made up of ever so many particulars. 

Sect. 2. Made by the power of composing in the mind. — These collec- 
tive ideas of substances the mind makes by its power of composition, and 
uniting severally either simple or complex ideas into oue, as it does by the 
same faculty make the complex ideas of particular substances, consisting 
of an aggregate of divers simple ideas, united in one substance ; and as the 
mind, by putting together the repeated ideas of unity, makes the collective 
mode, or complex idea of any number, as a score, or a gross, &c. so by 
putting together several particular substances, it makes collective ideas of 
substances, as a troop, an army, a swarm, a city, a fleet; each of which, 
every one finds, that he represents to his own mind by one idea, in one 



Ch. 24. OP COLLECTIVE IDEAS OF SUBSTANCES. 201 

view ; and so under that notion considers those several things as perfectly 
one, as one ship, or one atom. Nor is it harder to conceive how an army 
of ten thousand men should make one idea, than how a man should make 
one idea: it being as easy to the mind to unite into one the idea of a great 
number of men, and consider it as one, as it is to unite into one particular 
all the distinct ideas that make up the composition of a man, and con- 
sider them all together as one. 

Sect. 3. All artificial things are collective ideas. — Among such kind of 
collective ideas are to be counted most part of artificial things, at least such 
of them as are made up of distinct substances: and in truth, if we consider 
all these collective ideas aright, as army, constellation, universe, as they 
are united into so many single ideas, they are but the artificial draughts of 
the mind ; bringing things very remote, and independent on one another, 
into one view, the better to contemplate and discourse of them, united into 
one conception, and signified by one name. For there are no things so re- 
mote, nor so contrary, which the mind cannot, by this art of composition, 
bring into one idea ; as is visible in that signified by the name universe. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

OF RELATION. 

Sect. 1. Relation, what. — Besides the ideas, whether simple or complex, 
that the mind has of things, as they are in themselves, there are others it 
gets from their comparison one with another. The understanding, in the 
consideration of anything, is not confined to that precise object: it can car- 
ry any idea as it were beyond itself, or at least look beyond it, to see how 
it stands in conformity to any other. When the mind so considers one 
thing, that it does as it were bring it to and set it by another, and carry its 
view from one to the other : this is, as the words import, relation and res- 
pect ; and the denominations given to positive things, intimating that res- 
pect, and serving as marks to lead the thoughts beyond the subject itself 
denominated to something distinct from it, are what we call relatives ; and 
the things, so brought together, related. Thus, when the mind considers 
Caius as such a positive being, it takes nothing into that idea but what 
really exists in Caius ; v. g. when I consider him as a man, I have nothing 
in my mind but the complex idea of the species, man. So likewise, when 
I say Caius is a white man, I have nothing but the bare consideration of a 
man who hath that white colour. But when I give Caius the name hus- 
band, I intimate some other person ; and when I give him the name 
whiter, I intimate some other thing : in both cases my thought is led to 
something beyond Caius, and there are two things brought into considera- 
tion. And since any idea, whether simple or complex, maybe the occasion 
why the mind thus brings two things together, and as it were takes a view 
of them at once, though still considered as distinct; therefore any of our 
ideas may be the foundation of relation. As in the above-mentioned in- 
stance, the contract and ceremony of marriage with Sempronia is the 
occasion of the denomination or relation of husband; and the colour whit»; 
the occasion why he is said to be whiter than freestone. 

Sect. 2. Relations without correlative terms not easily perceived.— 
These, and the like relations, expressed by relative terms, that have others 
answering them, with a reciprocal intimation, as father and son, bigger 
and less, cause and effect, are very obvious to every one, and every body 
fu first sight perceives the relation. For father and son, husband and wife, 
snd such other correlative terms, seem so nearly to belong one to another 
and through custom do so readily chime and answer one another in pee- 
2A 



202 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

pie's memories, that, upon the naming of either of them, the thoughts are 
presently carried beyond the thing so named; and nobody overlooks or 
doubts of relation, where it is so plainly intimated. But where languages 
have failed to give correlative names, there the relation is not always so 
easily taken notice of. Concubine is, no doubt, a relative name, as weL 
as wife ; but in languages where this and the like words, have not a corre- 
lative term, there people are not so apt to take them to be so, as wanting 
that evident mark of relation which is between correlatives, which seem to 
explain one another, and not to be able to exist but together. Hence it is, 
that many of those names which, duly considered, do include evident re- 
lations, have been called external denominations. But all names, that are 
more than empty sounds, must signify some idea, which is either in the 
thing to which the name is applied — and then it is positive, and is looked 
on as united to, and existing in, the thing to which the denomination is 
given — or else it arises from the respect the mind finds in it to something 
distinct from it, with which it considers it ; and then it concludes a re- 
lation. 

Sect. 3. Some seemingly absolute terms contain relations. — Another 
sort of relative terms there is which are not looked on to be either relative, 
or so much as external denominations ; which yet, under the form and ap- 
pearance of signifying something absolute in the subject, do conceal a tacit, 
though less observable, relation. Such are the seemingly positive terms of 
old, great, imperfect, &c. whereof I shall have occasion to speak more at 
large in the following chapters. 

Sect. 4. Relation different from the things related. — This farther may 
be observed, that the ideas of relation may be the same in men, who have 
far different ideas of the things that are related, or that are thus compared ; 
v. g. those who have far different ideas of a man, may yet agree in the 
notion of a father; which is a notion superinduced to the substance, or 
man, and refers only to an act of that thing called man, whereby he con- 
tributes to the generation of one of his own kind, let man be what it will. 

Sect. 5. Change of relation may be without any change in the subject. 
— The nature therefore of relation consists in the referring or comparing 
two things one to another ; from which comparison one or both comes to 
be denominated. And if either of those things be removed, or cease to be, 
the relation ceases, and the denomination consequent to it, though the 
other receive in itself no alteration at all; v. g. Caius, whom I consider 
to-day as a father, ceases to be so to-morrow, only by the death of his son, 
without any alteration made in himself. Nay, barely by the mind's chang- 
ing the object to which it compares any thing, the same thing is capable 
of having contrary denominations at the same time: v. g. Caius, compared 
to several persons, may truly be said to be older and younger, stronger and 
weaker, &c 

Sect. 6. Relation only betwixt two things. — Whatsoever doth or can 
exist, or be considered as one thing, is positive ; and so not only simple 
ideas and substances, but modes also, are positive beings ; though the parts 
of which they consist are very often relative one to another ; but the whole 
together considered as one thing, and producing in us the complex idea of 
one tiling, which idea is in our minds as one picture, though an aggregate 
of divers parts, and under one name, it is a positive or absolute thing 
or idea. Thus a triangle, though the parts thereof, compared one to another, 
be relative, yet the idea of the whole is a positive absolute idea. The same 
may be said of a family, a tune, &c. for there can be no relation but be- 
twixt two things considered as two things. There must always be in re- 
lation two ideas, or things, either in themselves really separate, or con- 
sidered as distinct, and then a ground or occasion for their comparison. 

Sect. 7. All things capable of relation. — Concerning relation in general, 
these things may be considered : First, that there is no one thing whether 



Ch. 25. OF RELATION. 203 

simple idea, substance, mode, or relation, or name of either of them, which 
is not capable of almost an infinite number of considerations, in reference 
to others things ; and therefore this makes no small part of men's thoughts 
and words : v. g. one single man may at once be concerned in, and sustain 
all these following relations, and many more, viz. father, brother, son, 
grandfather, grandson, father-in-law, son-in-law, husband, friend, enemy, 
subject, general, judge, patron, client, professor, European, Englishman, 
islander, servant, master, possessor, captain, superior, inferior, bigger, less, 
older, younger, contemporary, like, unlike, &c. to an almost infinite num- 
ber : he being capable of as many relations as there can be occasions of 
comparing him to other things, in any manner of agreement, disagreement, 
or respect whatsoever. For, as I said, relation is a way of comparing or 
considering two things together, and giving one or both of. them some 
appellation from that comparison ; and sometimes giving even the relation 
itself a name. 

Sect. 8. The ideas of relations clearer often than of the subjects rela- 
ted. — Secondly, this farther may be considered concerning relation, that 
though it be not contained in the real existence of things, but something ex- 
traneous and superinduced ; yet the ideas which relative words stand for, are 
often clearer and more distinct than of those substances to which they do 
belong. The notion we have of a father, or brother, is a great deal clearer 
and more distinct than that we have of a man ; or, if you will, paternity 
is a thing whereof it is easier to have a clearer idea than of humanity : and 
I can Nnuch easier conceive what a friend is, than what God : because 
the knowledge of one action, or one simple idea, is oftentimes sufficient to 
give me the notion of a relation : but to the knowing of any substantial 
being, an accurate collection of sundry ideas is necessary. A man, if he 
compares two things together, can hardly be supposed not to know what 
it is wherein he compares them : so that when he compares any things to- 
gether, he cannot but have a very clear idea of that relation. The ideas 
then of relations are capable at least of being more perfect and distinct in 
our minds than those of substances. Because it is commonly hard to know 
all the simple ideas which are really in any substance, but for the most 
part easy enough to know the simple ideas that make up any relation I think 
on, or have a name for ; v. g. comparing two men, in reference to one com- 
mon parent, it is very easy to frame the ideas of brothers, without having 
yet the perfect idea of a man. For significant relative words, as well as 
others, standing only for ideas, and those being all either simple, or made 
up of simple ones, it suffices for the knowing the precise idea the relative 
term stands for, to have a clear conception of that which is the foundation 
of the relation ; which may be done without having a perfect and clear idea 
of the thing it is attributed to. Thus having the notion, that one laid the egg 
out of which the other was hatched, I have a clear idea of the relation of 
dam and chick, between the two cassiowaries in St James's Park ; though 
perhaps I have but a very obscure and imperfect idea of those birds 
themselves. 

Sect. 9. Relations all terminate in simple ideas. — Thirdly, though there 
be a great number of considerations, wherein things may be compared one 
with another, and so a multitude of relations ; yet they all terminate in, 
and are concerned about, those simple ideas, either of sensation or reflec- 
tion : which I think to be the whole materials of all our knowledge. To 
clear this, I shall show it in the most considerable relations that we have 
any notion of, in some that seem to be the most remote from sense or re- 
flection ; which yet will appear to have their ideas from thence, and leave 
it past doubt, that the notions we have of them are but certain simple 
ideas, and so originally derived from sense or reflection. 

Sect. 10. Terms leading the mind beyond the subject denominated, 
are relative. — Fourthly, that relation being the considering of one thing 



204 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

with another, which is extrinsical to it, it is evident, that all words that 
necessarily lead the mind to any other ideas than are supposed really to 
exist in that thing, to which the words are applied, are relative words : 
v. g. a man black, merry, thoughtful, thirsty, angry, extended ; these, and 
the like, are all absolute, because they neither signify nor intimate any 
thing but what does or is supposed really to exist in the man thus denomi- 
nated : but father, brother, king, husband, blacker, merrier, &c are words 
which, together with the thing they denominate, imply also something else 
separate and exterior to the existence of that thing. 

Sect. 11. Conclusion. — Having laid down these premises concerning 
relation in general, I shall now proceed to show, in some instances, how 
all the ideas we have of relation are made up, as the others are, only of 
simple ideas ; and that they all, how refined or remote from sense soever 
they seem, terminate at last in simple ideas. I shall begin with the most 
comprehensive relation, wherein all things that do or can exist are con- 
cerned ; and that is the relation of cause and effect. The idea whereof, 
how derived from the two fountains of all our knowledge, sensation and 
reflection, I shall in the next place consider. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

OF CAUSE AND EFFECT, AND OTHER RELATIONS. 

Sect. 1. Whence their ideas got. — In the notice that our senses take 
of the constant vicissitudes of things, we cannot but observe, that several 
particular, both qualities and substances, begin to exist ; and that they re- 
ceive this their existence from the due application and operation of some 
other being. From this observation we get our ideas of cause and effect. 
That which produces any simple or complex idea we denote by the gene- 
ral name cause ; and that which is produced, effect. Thus, finding, that in 
that substance which we call wax, fluidity, which is a simple idea that was 
not in it before, is constantly produced by the application of a certain de- 
gree of heat ; we call the simple idea of heat, in relation to fluidity in wax, 
the cause of it, and fluidity the effect. So also finding that the substance 
of wood, which is a certain collection of simple ideas so called, by the 
application of fire is turned into another substance called ashes, i. e. ano- 
ther complex idea, consisting of a collection of simple ideas, quite different 
from that complex idea which we call wood ; we consider fire, in relation 
to ashes, as cause, and the ashes as effect. So that whatever is consi- 
dered by us to conduce or operate to the producing any particular simple 
idea, or collection of simple ideas, whether substance or mode, which did 
not before exist, hath thereby in our minds the relation of a cause, and so 
is denominated by us. 

Sect. 2. Creation, generation, making alteration. — Having thus, from 
what our senses are able to discover, in the operations of bodies 
on one another, got the notion of cause and effect, viz. that a cause is 
that which makes any other thing, either simple idea, substance or mode, 
begin to be ; and an effect is that which had its beginning from some other 
thing, the mind finds no great difficulty to distinguish the several originals 
of things into two sorts. 

First, when the thing is wholly new, so that no part thereof did ever ex- 
ist before; as when a new particle of matter doth begin to exist, in rerum 
natura, which had before no being, and this we call creation. 

Secondly, when a thing is made up of particles, which did all of them 
before exist, but that very thing so constituted of pre-existing particles, which 
considered all together make up such a collection of simple ideas as had 



Ch. 26. OF CAUSE AND EFFECT, &c. 205 

not any existence before ; as this man, this egg, rose, or cherry, &c. And 
this, when referred to a substance, produced in the ordinary course of nature, 
by an internal principle, but set on work by, and received from some ex- 
ternal agent or cause, and working by insensible ways, which we perceive 
not, we call generation : when the cause is extrinsical, and the effect pro- 
duced by a sensible separation, or juxta position of discernible parts, we call 
it making ; and such are all artificial things. When any simple idea is 
produced which was not in that subject before, we call it alteration. Thus 
a man is generated, a picture made, and either of them altered, when any 
new sensible quality or simple idea is produced in either of them, which 
was not there before ; and the things thus made to exist, which were not 
there before, are effects ; and those things which operated to the existence, 
causes. In which, and all other cases, we may observe, that the notion 
of cause and effect has its rise from ideas, received by sensation or reflec- 
tion ; and that this relation, how comprehensible soever, terminates at last 
in them. For to have the idea of cause and effect, it suffices to consider 
any simple idea, or substance, as beginning to exist by the operation of 
some other, without knowing the manner of that operation. 

Sect. 3. Relations of time. — Time and place are also the foundations of 
very large relations, and all finite beings at least are concerned in them. 
But having already shown, in another place, how we get these ideas, it may 
suffice here to intimate, that most of the denominations of things received 
from time, are only relations. Thus, when any one says that queen Eliza- 
beth lived sixty-nine, and reigned forty-five years, these words import only 
the relation of that duration to some other, and mean no more than this, 
that the duration of her existence was equal to sixty-nine, and the duration 
of her government to forty-five annual revolutions of the sun ; and so are 
all words, answering, how long. Again, William the Conqueror invaded 
England about the year 1066, which means this, that taking the duration 
from our Saviour's time till now, for one entire great length of time, it shows 
at what distance this invasion was from the two extremes ; and so do all 
words of time, answering to the question, when, which show only the dis- 
tance of any point of time from the period of a longer duration, from which 
we measure, and to which we thereby consider it as related. 

Sect. 4. There are yet, besides those, other words of time, that ordi- 
narily are thought to stand for positive ideas, which yet will, when consi- 
dered, be found to be relative, such as are young, old, &c. which include 
and intimate the relation any thing has to a certain length of duration 
whereof we have the idea in our minds. Thus having settled in our thoughts 
the idea of the ordinary duration of a man to be seventy years, when we 
say a man is young, we mean that his age is yet but a small part of 
that which usually men attain to : and when we denominate him old, we 
mean that his duration is run out almost to the end of that which men do 
not usually exceed. And so it is but comparing the particular age, or dura- 
tion of this or that man, to the idea of that duration which we have in our 
minds, as ordinarily belonging to that sort of animals ; which is plain, in the 
application of these names to other things ; for a man is called young at 
twenty, and very young at seven years old : but yet a horse we call 
old at twenty, and a dog at seven years ; because in each of these we 
compare their age to different ideas of duration, which are settled in our 
minds, as belonging to these several sorts of animals, in the ordinary course 
of nature. But the sun and stars, though they have outlasted several gene- 
rations of men, we call not old, because we do not know what period God 
hath set to that sort of beings. This term belonging properly to those 
things which we can observe in the ordinary course of things, by a natu- 
ral decay, to come to an end in a certain period . of time ; and so have in 
our minds, as it were, a standard to which we can compare the several 
parts of their duration ; and, by the relation they bear thereunto, call them 



206 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

young or old ; winch we cannot therefore do to a ruby or aiamond, things 
whose usual periods we know not. 

Sect. 5. Relations of place and extension. — The relation also that things 
have to one another in their places and distances, is very obvious to observe ; 
as above, below, a mile distant from Charing-cross, in England, and in Lon- 
don. But as in duration, so in extension and bulk, there are some ideas 
that are relative, which we signify by names that are thought positive ; as 
great and little are truly relations. For here also having, by observation, 
settled in our minds the ideas of the bigness of several species of things 
from those we have been most accustomed to, we make them as it were the 
standards whereby to denominate the bulk of others. Thus we call a great 
apple, such a one as is bigger than the ordinary sort of those we have been 
used to : and a little horse, such a one as comes not up to the size of that 
idea which we have in our minds to belong ordinarily to horses ; and that 
will be a great horse to a Welchman which is but a little one to a Fleming ; 
they two having, from the different breed of their countries, taken several 
sized ideas to which they compare, and in relation to which they denomi- 
nate, their great and their little. 

Sect. 6. Absolute terms often stand for relations. — So likewise weak 
and strong are but relative denominations of power, compared to some ideas 
we have at that time of greater or less power. Thus when we say a weak 
man, we mean one that has not so much strength or power to move, as usual- 
ly men have, or usually those of his size have : which is a comparing his 
strength to the idea we have of the usual strength of men, or men of such 
a size. The like, when we say the creatures are all weak things ; weak, 
there, is but a relative term, signifying the disproportion there is in the 
power of God and the creatures. And so abundance of words, in ordinary 
speech, stand only for relations (and perhaps the greatest part) which at 
first sight seem to have no such signification: v. g. the ship has necessary 
stores. Necessary and stores are both relative words ; one having a rela- 
tion to the accomplishing the voyage intended, and the other to future use. 
All which relations, how they are confined to and terminate in ideas deri- 
ved from sensation or reflection, is too obvious to need any explication. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 

Sect. 1. Wherein identity consists. — Another occasion the mind often 
takes of comparing, is the very being of things : when considering any 
thing as existing at any determined time and place, we compare it with 
itself existing at another time, and thereon form the ideas of identity and 
diversity. When we see any thing to be in any place in any instant of 
time, we are sure (be it what it will ) that it is that very thing, and not 
another which at that same time exists in another place, how like and un- 
distinguishable soever it may be in all other respects : and in this consists 
identity, when the ideas it is attributed to vary not at all from what they 
were that moment wherein we consider their former existence, and to which 
we compare the present. For we never finding nor conceiving it possible 
that two things of the same kind should exist in the same place^at the same 
time, we rightly conclude, that whatever exists any where at any time, ex- 
cludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone. When, therefore, we 
demand, whether any thing be the same or no, it refers always to some- 
thing that existed such a time in such a place, which it is certain at that 
instant was the same with itself, and no other. From whence it follows, 
that one thing cannot have two beginnings of existence, nor two things 



Ch. 27. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 207 

one beginning ; it being impossible for two things of the same kind to be 
or exist in the same instant, in the very same place, or one and the same 
thing in different places. That therefore that had one beginning, is the 
same thing ; and that which had a different beginning in time and place 
from that, is not the same, but diverse. That which has made the difficulty 
about this relation, has been the little care and attention used in having pre- 
cise notions of the things to which it is attributed. 

Sect. 2. Identity of substances. — We have the ideas but of three sorts 
of substances: 1. God. 2. Finite intelligences. 3. Bodies. First, God 
is without beginning, eternal, unalterable, and every where ; and therefore 
concerning his identity there can be no doubt. Secondly, finite spirits, hav- 
ing had each its determinate time and place of beginning to exist, the rela- 
tion to that time and place will always determine to each of them its identity, 
as long as it exists. Thirdly, the same will hold of every particle of matter, 
to which no addition or subtraction of matter being made, it is the same. 
For though these three sorts of substances, as we term them, do not exclude 
one another out of the same place ; yet we cannot conceive but that they 
must necessarily each of them exclude any of the same kind out of the 
same place: or else the notions and names of identity and diversity would 
be in vain, and there could be no such distinction of substances, or any thing 
else one from another. For example : could two bodies be in the same 
place at the same time, then those two parcels of matter must be one and 
the same, take them great or little ; nay, all bodies must be one and the 
same. For by the same reason that two particles of matter may be in one 
place, all bodies may be in one place : which, when it can be supposed, takes 
away the distinction of identity and diversity of one and more, and renders 
it ridiculous. But it being a contradiction, that two or more should be one, 
identity and diversity are relations and ways of comparing well-founded, 
and of use to the understanding. 

Identity of modes. — All other things being but modes or relations ulti- 
mately terminated in substances, the identity and diversity of each particular 
existence of them too will be by the same way determined : only as to 
things whose existence is in succession, such as are the actions of finite 
beings, v. g. motion and thought, both which consist in a continued train 
of succession ; concerning their diversity, there can be no question : because 
each perishing the moment it begins, they cannot exist in different times, or 
in different places, as permanent beings can at different times exist in dis- 
tant places ; and therefore no motion or thought, considered as at different 
times, can be the same, each part thereof having a different beginning of 
existence. 

Sect. 3. Principium individuations. — From what has been said, it is 
easy to discover what is so much inquired after, the principium individua- 
tions ; and that, it is plain, is existence itself, which determines a being 
of any sort to a particular time and place, incommunicable to two beings of 
the same kind. This, though it seems easier to conceive in simple sub- 
stances or modes, yet when reflected on is not more difficult in compound 
ones, if care be taken to what it is applied : v. g. let us suppose an atom, 
z. e. a continued body under one immutable superficies, existing in a deter- 
mined time and place : it is evident that, considered in any instant of its 
existence, it is in that instant the same with itself. For being at that in- 
stant what it is, and nothing else, it is the same, and so must continue as 
long as its existence is continued ; for so long it will be the same, and no 
other. In like manner, if two or more atoms be joined together into the 
came mass, every one of those atoms will be the same, by the foregoing rule: 
and whilst they exist united together, the mass, consisting of the same 
atoms, must be the same mass, or the same body, let the parts be ever so 
differently jumbled. But if one of these atoms be taken away, cr one new 
one added, it is no longer the same mass, or the same body. In the state 



208 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

of living creatures, their identity depends not on amass of the same par- 
ticles, but on something else. For in them the variation of -great parcels of 
matter alters not the identity : an oak growing from a plant to a great tree, 
and then lopped, is still the same oak; and a colt grown up to a horse, 
sometimes fat, sometimes lean, is all the while the same horse ; though, in 
both these cases, there may be a manifest change of the parts ; so that truly 
they are not either of them the same masses of matter, though they be truly 
one of them the same oak, and the other the same horse. The reason 
whereof is, that in these two cases, a mass of matter, and a living body, iden- 
tity is not applied to the same thing. 

Sect. 4. Identity of vegetables. — We must therefore consider wherein 
an oak differs from a mass of matter, and that seems to me to be in this, 
that the one is only the cohesion of particles of matter any how united, 
the other such a disposition of them as constitutes the parts of an oak ; and 
such an organization of those parts as is fit to receive and distribute nour- 
ishment, so as to continue and frame the wood, bark, and leaves, &c. of 
an oak, in which consists the vegetable life. That being then one plant 
which has such an organization of parts in one coherent body partaking of 
one common life, it continues to be the same plant as long as it partakes 
of the same life, though that life be communicated to new particles of mat- 
ter vitally united to the living plant, in a like continued organization con- 
formable to that sort of plants. For this organization being at any one 
instant in any one collection of matter, is in that particular concrete, dis- 
tinguished from all other, and is that individual life which existing con- 
stantly from that moment both forwards and backwards, in the same continuity 
of insensibly succeeding parts united to the living body of the plant, it has 
that identity, which makes the same plant, and all the parts of it, parts of 
the same plant, during all the time that they exist united in that continued 
organization, which is fit to convey that common life to all the parts so 
united. 

Sect. 5. Identity of animals. — The case is not so much different in 
brutes, but that any one may hence see what makes an animal, and con- 
tinues it the same. Something we have like this in machines, and may 
serve to illustrate it. For example, what is a watch? It is plain it is no- 
thing but a fit organization, or construction of parts, to a certain end, 
which, when a sufficient force is added to it, it is capable to attain. If 
we would suppose this machine one continued body, all whose organized 
parts were repaired, increased, or diminished, by a constant addition 
or separation of insensible parts, with one common life, we should have 
something very much like the body of an animal, with this difference, that 
in an animal the fitness of the organization, and the motion wherein life con- 
sists, begin together, the motion coming from within ; but in machines, the 
force coming sensibly from without, is often away when the organ is in or- 
der, and well fitted to receive it. 

Sect. 6. Identity of man. — This also shows wherein the identity of the 
same man consists ; viz. in nothing but a participation of the same continued 
life, by constantly fleeting particles of matter, in succession, vitally united to 
the same organized body. He that shall place the identity of man in any 
thing else, but, like that of other animals, in one fitly organized body, taken 
in any one instant, and from thence continued under one organization of life 
in several successively fleeting particles of matter united to it, will find it 
hard to make an embryo, one of years, mad and sober, the same man, by any 
supposition, that will not make it possible for Seth, Ishmael, Socrates, Pilate,' 
St Austin, and Ceesar Borgia, to be the same man. But if the identity of 
soul alone makes the same man, and there be nothing in the nature of 
matter why the same individual spirit may not be united to different bodies, 
it will be possible that those men living in distant ages, and of different tem- 
pers, may have been the same man : which way of speaking must be, from a 



Ch. 27. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 209 

very strange use of the word man, applied to an idea, out of which body and 
shape are excluded. And that way of speaking would agree yet worse with 
the notions of those philosophers who allow of transmigration, and are of 
opinion thatthe souls of men may, for their miscarriages, be detruded into the 
bodies of beasts, as fit habitations, with organs suited to the satisfaction of 
their brutal inclinations. But yet, I think, nobody, could he be sure that the 
soul of Heliogabalus were in one of his hogs, would yet say that hog were 
a man or Heliogabalus. 

Sect. 7. Identity suited to the idea. — It is not therefore unity of sub- 
stance that comprehends all sorts of identity, or will determine it in every 
case: but to conceive and judge of it aright, we must consider what idea 
the word it is applied to stands for; it being one thing to be the same sub- 
stance, another the same man, and a third the same person, if person, man, 
and substance are three names standing for three different ideas; for such 
as is the idea belonging to that name, such must be the identity; which, if 
it had been a little more carefully attended to, would possibly have prevent- 
ed a great deal of that confusion, which often occurs about this matter, 
with no small seeming difficulties, especially concerning personal identity, 
which therefore we shall in the next place a little consider. 

Sect. 8. Same man. — An animal is a living organized body; and fre- 
quently the same animal, as we have observed, is the same continued life 
communicated to different particles of matter, as they happen successively 
to be united to that organized living body. And whatever is talked of other 
definitions, ingenious observation puts it past doubt, that the idea in our 
minds, of which the sound man in our mouths is the sign, is nothing else 
but of an animal of such a certain form : since I think I may be confident, 
that whoever should see a creature of his own shape and make, though it 
had no more reason all its life than a cat or a parrot, would call him still a 
man ; or whoever should hear a cat or a parrot discourse, reason, and phi- 
losophize, would call or think it nothing but a cat or a parrot ; and say, 
the one was a dull irrational man, and the other a very intelligent ra- 
tional parrot. A relation we have in an author of great note is sufficient to 
countenance the supposition of a rational parrot. His words are(c) : 

" I had a mind to know from Prince Maurice's own mouth the account 
of a common, but much credited story, that I heard so often from many 
others, of an old parrot he had in Brasil during his government there, that 
spoke, and asked, and answered common questions like a reasonable crea- 
ture : so that those of his train there generally concluded it to be witchery 
or possession ; and one of his chaplains, who lived long after in Holland, 
would never from that time endure a parrot, but said, they all had a devil in 
them. I had heard many particulars of this story, and assevered by peo- 
ple hard to be discredited, which made me ask Prince Maurice what there 
was of it. He said, with his usual plainness and dryness in talk, there 
was something true, but a great deal false of what had been reported. I 
desired to know of him what there was of the first 7 He told me short and 
coldly, that he had heard of such an old parrot when he had been at Brasil ; 
and though he believed nothing of it, and it was a good way off, yet he 
had so much curiosity as to send for it : that it was a very great and a very 
old one, and when it came first in the room where the prince was, with a 
great many Dutchmen about him", it said presently, What a company of 
white men are here ! They asked it what it thought that man was ] point- 
ing to the prince. It answered, some general or other ; when they brought 
it close to him, he asked it, *D'ou venez vous ] It answered, De Marinnan. 

(c) Memoirs of what passed in Christendom from 1672 to 1769, p. 3V5' 
(*) Whence come ye ? It answered, From Marinnan. The prince, To whom 
do you belong ? The parrot, To a Portuguese. Prince, What do you there 1 
Parrot, I look after the chickens. The prince laughed, and said, You look after 
2B 



210 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

The Prince, A qui estes vous I The parrot, A un Portugais. Prince, Que 
fais tu la? Parrot, Je gardez les poulles. The prince laughed, and said, 
Vous gardez les poulles 1 The parrot answered, Oui, moi, et je scai bien 
faire ; and made the chuck four or five times that people use to make to 
chickens when they call them. I set down the words of this worthy dia- 
ogue in French, just as Prince Maurice said them to me. I asked him in 
what language the parrot spoke, and he said, in Brasilian ; I asked wheth- 
er he understood Brasilian ; he said, no, but he had taken care to have two 
interpreters by him, the one a Dutchman that spoke Brasilian, and the 
other a Brasilian that spoke Dutch ; that he asked them separately and pri- 
vately, and both of them agreed in telling him just the same thing that the 
parrot had said. I could not but tell this odd story, because it is so much 
out of the way, and from the first hand, and what may pass for a good one ; 
for I dare say this prince at least believed himself in all he told me, having 
ever passed for a very honest and pious man : I leave it to naturalists to 
reason, and to other men to believe, as they please upon it ; however, it is 
not, perhaps, amiss to relieve or enliven a busy scene sometimes with such 
digressions, whether to the purpose or no." 

Same man. — I have taken care that the reader should have the story at 
large in the author's own words, because he seems to me not to have 
thought it incredible ; for it cannot be imagined that so able a man as he, 
who had sufficiency enough to warrant all the testimonies he gives of him- 
self, should take so much pains in a place where it had nothing to do, to 
pin so close not only on a man whom he mentions as his friend, but on a 
prince in whom he acknowledges very great honesty and piety, a story 
which, if he himself thought incredible, he could not but also think ridiculous 
The prince, it is plain, who vouches this story, and our author, who re 
lates it from him, both of them call this talker a parrot ; and I ask any one 
else, who thinks such a story fit to be told, whether if this parrot, and all 
of its kind, had always talked, as we have a prince's word for it this one 
did, whether, I say, they would not have passed for a race of rational ani- 
mals : but yet whether for all that they would have been allowed to be 
men, and not parrots 1 For I presume it is not the idea of a thinking 
or rational being alone that makes the idea of a man in most people's 
sense, but of a body, so and so shaped, joined to it : and if that be the idea 
of a man, the same successive body not shifted all at once, must, as well as 
the same immaterial spirit, go to the making of the same man. 

Sect. 9. Personal identity. — This being premised, to find wherein per- 
sonal identity consists, we must consider what person stands for : which, 
I think, is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and 
can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and 
places ; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from 
thinking, and as it seems to me essential to it : it being impossible for any 
one to perceive, without perceiving that he does perceive. When we see, 
hear, taste, smell, feel, meditate, or will any thing, we know that we do 
so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions : and 
by this every one is to himself that which he calls self; it not being consi- 
dered in this case whether the same self be continued in the same or di- 
vers substances. For since consciousness always accompanies thinking, 
and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby 
distinguishes himself from all other thinking things ; in this alone consists 
personal identity, i. e. the sameness of a rational being : and as far as this 
consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, 
so far reaches the identity of that person ; it is the same self now it was 

the chickens ? The parrot answered, Yes, I and I know well enough how t*> 
do it. 



€h.. 27. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 211 

then ; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on 
it, that that action was done. 

Sect. 10. Consciousness makes personal identity. — But it is farther 
inquired, whether it be the same identical substance 1 This few would 
think they had reason to doubt of, if those perceptions, with their con- 
sciousness, always remained present in the mind, whereby the same think- 
ing thing would be always consciously present, and, as would be thought, 
evidently the same to itself. But that which seems to make the difficulty 
is this, that this consciousness being interrupted always by forgetfulness, 
there being no moment of our lives wherein we have the whole train of all 
our past actions before our eyes in one view, but even the best memories 
losing the sight of one part whilst they are viewing another ; — and we 
sometimes, and that the greatest part of our lives, not reflecting on our 
past selves, being intent on our present thoughts, and in sound sleep having 
no thoughts at all, or at least none with that consciousness which remarks 
our walking thoughts ; — I say, in all these cases, our consciousness being 
interrupted, and we losing the sight of our past selves, doubts are raised 
whether we are the same thinking thing, i. e. the same substance, or no. 
Which, however reasonable or unreasonable, concerns not personal iden- 
tity at all : the question being, what makes the same person, and not whe- 
ther it be the same identical substance, which always thinks in the same 
person ; which in this case matters not at all : different substances, by the 
same consciousness (where they do partake in it,) being united into 
one person, as well as different bodies by the same life are united into one 
animal, whose identity is preserved, in that change of substances, by the 
unity of one continued life. For it being the same consciousness that 
makes a man be himself to himself, personal identity depends on that only, 
whether it be annexed solely to one individual substance, or can be con- 
tinued in a succession of several substances. For as far as any intelligent 
being can repeat the idea of any past action with the same consciousness 
it had of it at first, and with the same consciousness it has of any present 
action, so far it is the same personal self. For it is by the consciousness 
it has of its present thoughts and actions, that it is self to itself now, and 
so will be the same self, as far as the same consciousness can extend to ac- 
tions past or to come ; and would be by distance of time, or change of sub- 
stance, no more two persons, than a man be two men by wearing other 
clothes to-day than he did yesterday, with a long or a short sleep between : 
the same consciousness uniting those distant actions into the same person, 
whatever substances contributed to their production. 

Sect. 11. Personal identity in change of substances. — Thatthis is so, 
we have some kind of evidence in our very bodies, all whose particles, 
whilst vitally united to this same thinking conscious self, so that we feel 
when they are touched, and are effected by, and conscious of good or harm 
that happens to them, are a part of ourselves, i. e. of our thinking conscious 
self. Thus the limbs of his body are to every one a part of himself : he 
sympathizes and is concerned for them. Cut off a hand, and thereby separate 
it from that consciousness he had of its heat, cold, and other affections, and 
it is then no longer a part of that which is himself, any more than the re- 
motest part of matter. Thus we see the substance, whereof personal self 
consisted at one time, may be varied at another, without the change of per- 
sonal identity ; there being no question about the same person, though the 
limbs, which but now were a part of it, be cut off. 

Sect. 12. But the question is, " Whether, if the same substance which 
thinks be changed, it can be the same person ; or, remaining the same, it 
can be different persons V 

Whether in the change of thinking substances. — And to this I answer, 
first, This can be no question at all to those who place thought in a purely 
material animal constitution void of an immaterial substance. For whether 



212 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

their supposition be true or no, it is plain they conceive personal identity 
preserved in something else than identity of substance ; as animal identity 
is preserved in identity of life, and not of substance. And therefore those 
who place thinking in an immaterial substanoe only, before they can come 
to deal with these men, must show why personal identity cannot be pre- 
served in the change of immaterial substances, or variety of particular im- 
material substances, as well as animal identity is preserved in the change 
of material substances, or variety of particular bodies : unless they will say, 
it is one immaterial spirit that makes the same life in brutes, as it is one 
immaterial spirit that makes the same person in men ; which the Carte- 
sians at least will not admit, for fear of making brutes thinking things too. 

Sect. 13. But next, as to the first part of the question, " Whether if the 
same thinking substance (supposing immaterial substances only to think) 
be changed, it can be the same person'?" I answer, that cannot be re- 
solved, but by those who know what kind of substances they are that do 
think, and whether the consciousness of past actions can be transferred 
from one thinking substance to another. I grant, were the same conscious- 
ness the same individual action, it could not ; but it being but a present re- 
presentation of a past action, why it may not be possible that that may be 
represented to the mind to have been, which really never was, will remain 
to be shown. And therefore how far the consciousness of past actions is 
annexed to any individual agent, so that another cannot possibly have it, 
will be hard for us to determine, till we know what kind of action it is that 
cannot be done without a reflex act of perception accompanying it, and 
how performed by thinking substances, who cannot think without being 
conscious of it. But that which we call the same consciousness, not be- 
ing the same individual act, why one intellectual substance may not have 
represented to it, as done by itself, what it never did, and was perhaps 
done by some other agent ; why, I say, such a representation may not pos- 
sibly be without reality of matter of fact, as well as several representations 
in dreams are, which yet whilst dreaming we take for true, wil] be difficult 
to conclude from the nature of things. And that it never is so, will by us, 
till we have clearer views of the nature of thinking substances, be best re- 
solved into the goodness of God, who, as far as the happiness or misery of 
any of his sensible creatures is concerned in it, will not by a fatal error of 
theirs transfer from one to another that consciousness which draws re- 
ward or punishment with it. How far this may be an argument against 
those who would place thinking in a system of fleeting animal spirits, I 
leave to be considered. But yet, to return to the question before us, it 
must be allowed, that if the same consciousness (which, as has been 
shown, is quite a different thing from the same numerical figure or motion 
in body) can be transferred from one thinking substance to another, it will 
oe possible that two thinking substances may make but one person. For 
the same consciousness being preserved, whether in the same or different 
substances, the personal identity is preserved. 

Sect. 14. As to the second part of the question, " whether the same im- . 
material substance remaining, there may be two distinct persons V which 
question seems to me to be built on this, whether the same immaterial be- 
ino-, being conscious of the action of its past duration, may be wholly 
stripped of all the consciousness of its past existence, and lose it beyond 
the power of ever retrieving it again ; and so as it were beginning a new ac- 
count from a new period, have a consciousness that cannot reach beyond 
this new state. All those who hold pre-existence are evidently of this 
mind, since they allow the soul to have no remaining consciousness of what 
it did in the pre-existing state, either wholly separate from body, or inform - 
in 3- any other body ; and if they should not, it is plain experience would 
be & against them. So that personal identity reaching no farther than con- 
sciousness reaches, a pre-existent spirit not having continued so many 



Ch. 27. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 213 

ages in a state of silence, must needs make different persons. Suppose a 
Christian, Platonist or Pythagorean should, upon God's having ended all his 
works of creation the seventh day, think his soul hath existed ever since: 
and would imagine it has revolved in several human bodies, as I once met 
with one who was persuaded his had been the soul of Socrates, how rea- 
sonably I will not dispute ; this I know, that in the post he filled, which 
was no inconsiderable one, he passed for a very rational man, and the press 
has shown that he wanted not parts or learning; would any one say, 
that he being not conscious of any of Socrates's actions or thoughts, could 
be the same person with Socrates ? Let any one reflect upon himself, and 
conclude that he has in himself an immaterial spirit, which is that which 
thinks in him, and in the constant change of his body keeps him the 
same ; and is that which he calls himself: let him also suppose it to be the 
same soul that was in Nestor or Thersites at the siege of Troy (for souls 
being, as far as we know any thing of them, hi their nature indirferent to 
any parcel of matter, the supposition has no apparent absurdity in it), 
which it may have been, as well as it is now the soul of any other man : 
but he now having no consciousness of any of the actions either of Nes- 
tor or Thersites, does or can he conceive himself the same person with 
either of them 1 Can he be concerned in either of their actions ] attri- 
bute them to himself, or think them his own, more than the actions of any 
other man that ever existed } So that this consciousness not reaching to 
any of the actions of either of those men, he is no more one self with ei- 
ther of them, than if the soul or immaterial spirit that now informs him had 
been created, and began to exist, when it began to inform his present body; 
though it were ever so true, that the same spirit that informed Nestor's 
or Thersites's body, were numerically the same that now informs his. 
For this would no more make him the same person with Nestor, than if 
some of the particles of matter that were once a part of Nestor, were now 
a part of this man ; the same immaterial substance, without the same con- 
sciousness, no more making the same person by being miited to any body, 
than the same particle of matter, without consciousness, united to any body, 
makes the same person. But let him once find himself conscious of any 
of the actions of Nestor, he then finds liimself the same person with Nes- 
tor. 

Sect. 15. And thus we may be able, without any difficulty, to conceive 
the same person at the resurrection, though in a body not exactly in make 
or parts the same which he had here, the same consciousness going along 
with the soul that inhabits it. But yet the soul alone, in the change of 
bodies, would scarce to any one, but to him that makes the soul the man, 
be enough to make the same man. For should the soul of a prince, 
carrying with it the consciousness of the prince's past life, enter and 
inform the body of a cobbler, as soon as deserted by his own soul, every 
one sees he would be the same person with the prince, accountable only 
for the prince's actions ; but who would say it was the same man ? The 
body, too, goes to the making the man, and would, I guess, to every body 
determine the man in this case ; wherein the soul with all its princely 
thoughts about it, would not make another man : but he w r ould be the same 
cobbler to every one besides himself. I know that, in the ordinary way of 
speaking, the same person and the same man, stand for one and the same 
thing. And indeed every one will always have a liberty to speak as he 
pleases, and to apply what articulate sounds to what ideas he thinks fit, 
and change them as often as he pleases. But yet when we will inquire what 
makes the same spirit, man, or person, we must fix the ideas of spirit, man, 
or person in our minds ; and having resolved with ourselves what we 
mean by them, it will not be hard to determine in either of them, or the 
Bke, when it is the same, and when not. 

Sect. 16. Consciousness makes the same person. — But though the 



214 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

same immaterial substance or soul does not alone, wherever it be, and in 
whatsoever state, make the same man ; yet it is plain, consciousness, as 
far as ever it can be extended, should it be to ages past, unites existences 
and actions, very remote in time, into the same person, as well as it does 
the existences and actions of the immediately preceding moment ; so that 
whatever has the consciousness of present and past actions, is the same 
person to whom they both belong. Had I the same consciousness that I 
saw the ark and Noah's flood, as that I saw an overflowing of the Thames 
last winter, or as that I write now ; I could no more doubt that I who 
write this now, that saw the Thames overflowed last winter, and that 
viewed the flood at the general deluge, was the same self, place that self 
in what substance you please, than that I who write this am the same my- 
self now whilst I write (whether I consist of all the same substance, ma- 
terial or immaterial, or no) that I was yesterday. For as to this point of 
being the same self, it matters not whether this present self be made up 
of the same or other substances ; I being as much concerned, and as justly 
accountable for any action that was done a thousand years since, appro- 
priated to me now by this self-consciousness, as I am for what I did the 
last moment. 

Sect. 17. Self depends on consciousness. — Self is that conscious think- 
ing thing (whatever substance made up of, whether spiritual or material, 
simple or compounded, it matters not) which is sensible, or conscious of 
pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for 
itself, as far as that consciousness extends. Thus every one finds, that 
whilst comprehended under that consciousness, the little finger is as much 
a part of himself, as what is most so. Upon separation of this little finger, 
should this consciousness go along with the little finger, and leave the rest 
of the body, it is evident the little finger would be the person, the same 
person ; and self then would have nothing to do with the rest of the body. 
As in this case it is the consciousness tha.t goes along with the substance, 
when one part is separate from another, which makes the same person, 
and constitutes this inseparable self; so it is in reference to substances 
remote in time. That with which the consciousness of this present think- 
ing thing can join itself, makes the same person, and is one self with it, 
and with nothing else ; and so attributes to itself, and owns all the actions 
of that thing as its own, as far as that consciousness reaches, and no far- 
ther ; as every one who reflects will perceive. 

Sect. 18. Objects of reward and punishment. — In this personal iden- 
tity is founded all the right and justice of reward and punishment ; happi- 
ness and misery being that for which every one is concerned for himself, 
and not mattering what becomes of any substance not joined to, or affected 
with that consciousness. For as it is evident in the instance I gave but 
now, if the consciousness went along with the little finger when it was 
cu 4 . off, that would be the same self which was concerned for the whole 
body yesterday, as making part of itself, whose actions then it cannot but 
admit as its own now. Though if the same body should still live, and im- 
mediately, from the separation of the little finger, have its own peculiar 
consciousness, whereof the little finger knew nothing ; it would not at all 
be concerned for it, as a part of itself, or could own any of its actions, or 
have any of them imputed to him. 

Sect. 19. This may show us wherein personal identity consists ; not in 
the identity of substance, but, as I have said, in the identity of conscious- 
ness ; wherein, if Socrates and the present mayor of Queenborough agree, 
they are the same person : if the same Socrates waking and sleeping do 
not partake of the same consciousness, Socrates waking and sleeping is 
not the same person. And to punish Socrates waking for what sleeping 
Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would be 
no more of right, than to punish one twin for what his brother twin did 



Ch. 27. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 215 

whereof he knew nothing, because their outsides were so like that they 
could not be distinguished; for such twins have been seen. 

Sect. 20. But yet possibly it will still be objected, suppose I wholly 
lose the memory of some parts of my life beyond a possibility of retrieving 
them, so that perhaps I shall never be conscious of them again ; yet am I 
not the same person that did those actions, had those thoughts that I once 
was conscious of, though I have now forgot them 1 To which I answer, 
that we must here take notice what the word I is applied to ; which, in 
this case, is the man only. And the same man being presumed to be the 
same person, I is easily here supposed to stand also for the same person. 
But if it be possible for the same man to have distinct incommunicable 
consciousness at different times, it is past doubt the same man would at 
different times make different persons ; which, we see, is the sense of 
mankind in the solemnest declarations of their opinions ; human laws not 
punishing the mad man for the sober man's actions, nor the sober man for 
what the mad man did, thereby making them two persons : which is some- 
what explained by our way of speaking in English, when we say, such a 
one is not himself, or is beside himself; in which phrases, it is insinuated, as 
if those who now, or at least first used them, thought that self was chang 
ed, — the self-same person was no longer in that man. 

Sect. 21. Difference between identity of man and person. — But yet it 
is hard to conceive that Socrates, the same individual man, should be two 
persons. To help us a little in this, we must consider what is meant by 
Socrates or the same individual man. 

First, it must be either the same individual, immaterial, thinking sub- 
stance ; in short, the same numerical soul, and nothing else. 

Secondly, or the same animal, without any regard to an immaterial 
soul. 

Thirdly, or the same immaterial spirit united to the same animal. 

Now, take which of these suppositions you please, it is impossible to 
make personal identity to consist in any thing but consciousness, or reach 
any farther than that does. 

For by the first of them, it must be allowed possible that a man born of 
different women, and in distant times, may be the same man. A way of 
speaking, which, whoever admits, must allow it possible for the same man 
to be two distinct persons as any two that have lived in different ages, 
without the knowledge of one another's thoughts. 

By the second and third, Socrates in this life, and after it, cannot be the 
same man any way but by the same consciousness ; and so making human 
identity to consist in the same thing wherein we place personal identity, 
there will be no difficulty to allow the same man to be the same person. 
But then they who place human identity in consciousness only, and not in 
something else, must consider how they will make the infant Socrates the 
same man with Socrates after the resurrection. But whatsoever to some 
men makes a man, and consequently the same individual man, wherein 
perhaps few are agreed, personal identity can by us be placed in nothing 
but consciousness, (which is that alone which makes what we call self) 
without involving us in great absurdities. 

Sect. 22. But is not man, drunk and sober, the same person, — why 
else is he punished for the fact he commits when drunk, though he be 
never afterwards conscious of it 1 Just as much the same person as a man 
that walks, and does other things in his sleep, is the same person, and is 
answerable for any mischief he shall do in it. Human laws punish both, 
with a justice suitable to their way of knowledge ; because in these cases 
they cannot distinguish certainly what is real, what counterfeit : and so 
the ignorance in drunkenness or sleep is not admitted as a plea. For 
though punishment be annexed to personality, and personality to conscious, 
ness, and the drunkard perhaps be not conscious of what he did; yet 



216 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

human judicatures justly punish him ; because the fact is proved against 
him, but want of consciousness cannot be proved for him. But in the great 
day, wherein the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open, it may be reason- 
able to think no one shall be made to answer for what he knows nothing 
of, but shall receive his doom, his conscience accusing or excusing him. 

Sect. 23. Consciousness alone makes self. — Nothing but consciousness 
can unite remote existences into the same person ; the identity of substance 
will not do it. For whatever substance there is, however framed, without 
consciousness there is no person : and a carcass may be a person, as well 
as any sort of substance be so without consciousness. 

Could we suppose two distinct incommunicable consciousnesses acting 
the same body, the one constantly by day, the other by night ; and, on the 
other side, the same consciousness acting by intervals, two distinct bodies : 
I ask, in the first case, whether the day and the night man would not be two 
as distinct persons as Socrates and Plato ] And, whether, in the second 
case, there would not be one person in two distinct bodies, as much as one 
man is the same in two distinct clothings ? Nor is it at all material to say, 
that this same, and this distinct consciousness, in the cases above men- 
tioned, is owing to the same, and distinct immaterial substances, bringing 
it with them to those bodies ; which, whether true or no, alters not the 
case ; since it is evident the personal identity would equally be determined 
by the consciousness, whether that consciousness were annexed to some 
individual immaterial substance or no. For granting that the thinking 
substance in man must be necessarily supposed immaterial, it is evident 
that immaterial thinking thing may sometimes part with its past conscious- 
ness, and be restored to it again, as appears in the forgetfulness men often 
have of their past actions : and the mind many times recovers the memory 
of a past consciousness which it had lost for twenty years together. Make 
these intervals of memory and forgetfulness to take their turns regularly 
by day and night, and you have two persons with the same immaterial spirit, 
as much as in the former instance, two persons with the same body. So that 
self is not determined by identity or diversity of substance, which it cannot 
be sure of, but only by identity of consciousness. 

Sect. 24. Indeed it may conceive the substance, whereof it is now made 
up, to have existed formerly, united in the same conscious being : but con- 
sciousness removed, that substance is no more itself, or makes no more a 
part of it, than any other substance ; as is evident in the instance we have 
already given of a limb cut off, of whose heat, or cold, or other affections, 
having no longer any consciousness, it is no more of a man's self than any 
other matter of the universe. In like manner it will be in reference to any 
immaterial substance, which is void of that consciousness whereby I am 
myself to myself: if there be any part of its existence which I cannot upon 
recollection join with that present consciousness, whereby I am now my 
self, it is in that part of its existence no more myself than any other imma- 
terial being. For whatsoever any substance has thought or done, which I 
cannot recollect, and by my consciousness make my own thought and action, 
it will no more belong to me, whether a part of me thought or did it, than 
if it had been thought or done by any other immaterial being any where 
existing. 

Sect. 25. I agree, the more probable opinion is, that this conscious- 
ness is annexed to, and the affection of, one individual immaterial substance. 

But let men, according to their diverse hypotheses, resolve of that as 
they please: this every intelligent being, sensible of happiness or misery, 
must grant, that there is something that is himself, that he is concerned 
for, and would have happy; that this self has existed in a continued dura- 
tion more than one instant, and therefore it is possible may exist, as it has 
done, months and years to come, without any certain bounds to be set to 
its duration ; and may be the same self, by the same consciousness, con- 



Ch. 27. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 217 

tinued on for the future. And thus, by his consciousness, he finds himself 
to be the same self which did such or such an action some years since, by 
which he comes to be happy or miserable now. In all which account of 
self, the same numerical substance is not considered as making the same 
self; but the same continued consciousness, in which several substances 
may have been united, and again separated from it ; which, whilst they 
continued in a vital union with that wherein this consciousness then re- 
sided, made a part of that same self. Thus any part of our bodies, vitally 
united to that which is conscious in us, makes a part of ourselves : but 
upon separation from the vital union, by which that consciousness is com- 
municated, that which a moment since was part of ourselves is now no 
more so than a part of another man's self is part of me ; and it is not im- 
possible but in a short time may become a real part of another person. And 
so we have the same numerical substance become a part of two different 
persons, and the same person preserved under the change of various sub- 
stances. Could we suppose any spirit wholly stripped of all its memory or 
consciousness of past actions, as we find our minds always are of a great 
part df ours, and sometimes of them all, the union or separation of such a 
spiritual substance would make no variation of personal identity, anymore 
than that of any particle of matter does. Any substance vitally united to 
the present thinking being is a part of that very same self which now is : 
any thing united to it by a consciousness of former actions makes also a 
part of the same self, which is the same both then and now. 

Sect. 26. Person, a forensic term. — Person, as I take it, is the name 
for this self. Wherever a man finds what he calls himself, there I think 
another may say is the same person. It is a forensic term appropriating 
actions and their merit ; and so belongs only to intelligent agents capable 
of a law, and happiness and misery. This personality extends itself beyond 
present existence to what is past only by consciousness, whereby it be- 
comes concerned and accountable, owns and imputes to itself past actions, 
just upon the same ground, and for the same reason that it does the pre- 
sent ; all which is founded in a concern for happiness, the unavoidable con- 
comitant of consciousness ; that which is conscious of pleasure and pain 
desiring that the self that is conscious should be happy. And therefore 
whatever past actions it cannot reconcile or appropriate to that present self 
by consciousness, it can be no more concerned in than if they had never 
been done: and to receive pleasure or pain, i. e. reward or punishment, on 
the account of any such action, is all one as to be made happy or miserable 
in its first being, without any demerit at all. For supposing a man pun- 
ished now for what he had done in another life, whereof he could be made 
to have no consciousness at all, what difference is there between that punish- 
ment, and being created miserable 1 And therefore, conformable to this, 
the apostle tells us, that at the great day, when every one shall "receive 
according to his doings, the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open." The 
sentence shall be justified by the consciousness ail persons shall have, that 
they themselves, in what body soever they appear, or what substances 
soever that consciousness adheres to, are the same that committed those 
actions, and deserve that punishment for them. 

Sect. 27. I am apt enough to think I have, in treating of this subject, 
made some suppositions that will look strange to some readers, and pos- 
sibly they are so in themselves. But yet, I think, they are such as are 
pardonable in this ignorance we are in of the nature of that thinking thing 
that is in us, and which we look on as ourselves. Did we know what it 
was, or how it was tied to a certain system of fleeting animal spirits ; or 
whether it could or could not perform its operations of thinking and 
memory out of a body organized as ours is ; and whether it has pleased 
God that no one such spirit shall ever be united to any but one such body, 
upon the right constitution of whose organs its memory should depend ; we 
2C 



•218 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

might see the absurdity of some of those suppositions I have made. But 
taking, as we ordinarily now do, (in the dark concerning these matters) 
the soul of a man for an immaterial substance, independent from matter, 
and indifferent alike to it all, there can from the nature of things be no 
absurdity at all to suppose, that the same soul may, at different times, be 
united to different bodies, and with them make up, for that time, one man : 
as well as we suppose a part of a sheep's body yesterday should be a part 
of a man's body to-morrow, and in that union make a vital part of MelibaBus 
himself, as well as it did of his ram. 

Sect. 28. The difficulty from ill use of names. — To conclude : whatever 
substance begins to exist, it must, during its existence, necessarily be the 
same : whatever compositions of substances begin to exist during the union 
of those substances, the concrete must be the same : whatsoever mode 
begins to exist, during its existence it is the same : and so if the composi- 
tion be of distinct substances and different modes, the same rule holds. 
Whereby it will appear, that the difficulty or obscurity that has been about 
this matter, rather rises from the names ill used, than from any obscurity in 
things themselves. For whatever makes the specific idea to which the 
name is applied, if that idea be steadily kept to, the distinction of any 
thing into the same, and divers, will easily be conceived, and there can arise 
no doubt about it. 

Sect. 29. Continued existence makes identity. — For supposing a 
rational spirit be the idea of a man, it is easy to know what is the same 
man, viz. the same spirit, whether separate or in a body, will be the same 
man. Supposing a rational spirit vitally united to a body of a certain con- 
formation of parts to make a man ; whilst that rational spirit, with that vital 
conformation of parts, though continued in a fleeting successive body, 
remains, it will be the same. But if to any one the idea of a man be but 
the vital union of parts in a certain shape: as long as that vital union and 
shape remain, in a concrete no otherwise the same, but by a continued 
succession of fleeting particles, it will be the same man. For whatever be the 
composition whereof the complex idea is made, whenever existence makes 
it one particular thing under any denomination, the same existence, con- 
tinued, preserves it the same individual under the same denomination (5). 

(5) The doctrine of identity and diversity contained in this chapter the bishop 
of Worcester pretends to be inconsistent -with the doctrines of the Christian faith, 
concerning the resurrection of the dead. His way of arguing from it is this: he 
says, the reason of believing the resurrection of the same body, upon Mr Locke's, 
grounds, is from the idea of identity. To which our author answers:* Give me 
leave, my lord, to say, that the reason of believing any article of the Christian 
faith (such as your lordship is here speaking of) to me, and upon my grounds, 
is its being a part of divine revelation: upon this ground I believed it, before I 
either writ that chapter of identity and diversity, and before I ever thought of 
those propositions which your lordship quotes out of that chapter; and upon the 
same ground I believe it still; and not from my idea of identity. This saying of 
your lordship's, therefore, being a proposition neither self-evident, nor allowed 
by me to be true, remains to be proved. So that your foundation failing, all 
jour large superstructure built thereon comes to nothing. 

But, my lord, before we go any farther, I crave leave humbly to represent to 
your lordship, that I thought you undertook to make out that my notion of ideas 
was inconsistent with the articles of the Christian faith. But that which your 
lordship instances in here, is not, that I yet know, an article of the Christian faith. 
The resurrection of the dead I acknowledge to be an article of the Christian faith: 
but that the resurrection of the same body, in your lordship's sense of the same 
body, is an article of the Christian faith, is what, I confess, I do not yet know. 

In the New Testament (wherein, I think, are contained all the articles of the 

* In his third letter to the Bishop of Worcester. 



Ch. 27. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 219 

Christian faith) I find our Saviour and the apostles to preach the resurrection of 
the dead, and the resurrection from the dead, in many places; but I do not remem- 
ber any place where the resurrection of the same body is so much as mentioned. 
Nay, which is very remarkable in the case, I do not remember in any place of 
the New Testament (where the general resurrection at the last day is spoken of) 
any such expression as the resurrection of the body, much less of the same body. 

I say the general resurrection at the last day; because, where the resurrection 
of some particular persons, presently upon our Saviour's resurrection, is men- 
tioned, the words are, * The graves were opened, and many bodies of saints, which 
slept, arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the 
Holy City, and appeared to many: of which peculiar way of speaking of this re- 
surrection, the passage itself gives a reason in these words, Appeared to many, 
i. e. those who slept appeared, so as to be known to be risen. But this could 
not be known, unless they brought with them the evidence that they were those 
who had been dead; whereof there were these two proofs, their graves were 
opened, and their bodies not only gone out of them, but appeared to be the same 
to those who had known them formerly alive, and knew them to be dead and 
buried. For if they had been those who had been dead so long, that all who 
knew them once alive were now gone, those to whom they appeared might have 
known them to be men, but could not have known they were risen from the dead, 
because they never knew they had been dead. All that by their appearing they 
could have known was, they were so many living strangers, of whose resur- 
rection they knew nothing. It was necessary, therefore, that they should come 
in such bodies as might in make and size, &c. appear to be the same they had 
before, that they might be known to those of their acquaintance whom they ap- 
peared to. And it is probable they were such as were newly dead, whose bo- 
dies were not yet dissolved and dissipated; and, therefore, it is particularly said 
here (differently from what is said of the general resurrection,) that their bodies 
arose; because they were the same that were then lying in their graves the mo- 
ment before they rose. 

But your lordship endeavours to prove it must be the same body: and let us 
grant that your lordship, nay, and others too, think you have proved it must be 
the same body; will you therefore say, that he holds what is inconsistent with an 
article of faith, who having never seen this your lordship's interpretation of the 
Scripture, nor your reasons for the same body, in your sense of same body; or, if 
he has seen them, yet not understanding them, or not perceiving the force of them, 
believes what the Scripture proposes to him, viz. that at the last day the dead shall 
be raised, without determining whether it shall be with the very same bodies or no ? 

I know your lordship pretends not to erect your particular interpretations of 
Scripture into articles of faith. And if you do not, he that believes the dead 
shall be raised believes that article of faith which the Scripture proposes; and 
cannot be accused of holding any thing inconsistent with it, if it should happen 
that what he holds is inconsistent with another proposition, viz. that the dead 
shall be raised with the same bodies, in your lordship's sense, which I do not 
find proposed in Holy Writ as an article of faith. 

But your lordship argues, it must be the same body; which, as you explain 
same bodyt, is not the same individual particles of matter which were united at 
the point of death, nor the same particles of matter that the sinner had at the 
time of the commission of his sins; but that it must be the same material sub- 
stance which was vitally united to the soul here; i. e. as I understand it, the 
same individual particles of matter which were, some time or other during his 
life here, vitally united to his soul. 

Your first argument to prove that it must be the same body, in this sense of 
the same body, is taken from these words of our Saviour:}:, All that are in the 
graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth. From whence your lordship 
argues§, that these words, All that are in their graves, relate to no other substance 
than what was united to the soul in life: because a different substance cannot be 
said to be in the graves, and to come out of them. Which words of your lord- 

* Matt, xxvii. 52, 53. t 2d Answer. $ John v. 28, 29. § 2d Answer. 



220 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

ship's, if they prove any thing, prove that the soul too is lodged in the grave, and 
raised out of it at the last day. For your lordship says, Can a different substance 
be said to be in the graves, and come out of them? So that, according to this 
interpretation of these words of our Saviour, no other substance being raised, but 
what hears his voice; and no other substance hearing his voice, but what, being 
called, comes out of the grave; and no other substance coming out of the grave, 
but what was in the grave; any one must conclude, that the soul, unless it be in 
the grave, will make no part of the person that is raised; unless, as your lord- 
ship argues against me*, you can make it out, that a substance which never was 
in the grave may come out of it, or that the soul is no substance. 

But setting aside the substance of the soul, another thing that will make any 
one doubt whether this your interpretation of our Saviour's words be necessarily 
to be received as their true sense, is, that it will not be very easily reconciled 
to your sayingt, you do not mean by the same body the same individual particles 
which were united at the point of death. And yet, by this interpretation of our 
Saviour's words, you can mean no other particles but such as were united at the 
point of death; because you mean no other substance but what comes out of the 
grave; and no substance, no particles come out, you say, but what were in the 
grave; and I think your lordship will not say, that the particles that were separate 
from the body by perspiration before the point of death were laid up in the grave. 

But your lordship, I find, has an answer to this, viz. jThat by comparing this 
with other places, you find that the words (of our Saviour above quoted) are to 
be understood of the substance of the body, to which the soul was united, and 
not to (I suppose your lordship writ, of) these individual particles, i. e. those 
individual particles that are in the grave at the resurrection. For so they must 
be read, to make your lordship's sense entire, and to the purpose of your answer 
here: and then, methinks, this last sense of our Saviour's words given by your 
lordship, wholly overturns the sense which we have given of them above, where 
from those words you press the belief of the resurrection of the same body, by 
this strong argument, that a substance could not, upon hearing the voice of Christ, 
come out of the grave, which was never in the grave. There (as far as I can 
understand your words) your lordship argues, that our Saviour's words are to 
be understood of the particles in the grave, unless, as your lordship says, one 
can make out that a substance which never was in the grave may come out of 
it. And here your lordship expressly says, That our Saviour's words are to be 
understood of the substance of that body to which the soul was (at any time) 
united, and not to those individual particles that are in the grave. Which, put 
together, seems to me to say, that our Saviour's words are to be understood of 
those particles only which are in the grave, and not of those particles only which 
are in the grave, but of others also, which have at any time been vitally united 
to the soul, but never were in the grave. 

The next text your lordship brings to make the resurrection of the same 
body, in your sense, an article of faith, are these words of St Paul: §For we must 
all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the 
things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or 
bad. To which your lordship subjoins this question|| : Can these words be 
understood of any other material substance but that body in which these things 
were done? Answer: A man may suspend his determining the meaning of the 
apostle to be, that a sinner shall suffer for his sins in the very same body 
Avherein he committed them; because St Paul does not say he shall have the 
very same body when he suffers that he had when he sinned. The apostle says 
indeed, done in his body. The body he had, and did these things in, at five 
or fifteen, was, no doubt, his body, as much as that which he did things in at 
fifty was his body, though his body were not the very same body at those dif- 
ferent ages; and so will the body which he shall have after the resurrection be 
his body, though it be not the very same with that which he had at five, or fifteen, 
or fifty. He that at three score is broke on the wheel for a murder he com- 
mitted at twenty, is punished for what he did in his body, though the body he 

* 2d Answer. t Ibid. { Ibid. S 2 Cor. v. 10. |] 2d Answer. 



Ch. 27. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 221 

has, i. e. his bc!dy at threescore, be not the same, i. e. made up of the same 
individual particles of matter that that body was which he had forty years before. 
When your lordship has resolved with yourself what that same immutable he 
is, which at the last judgment shall receive the things done in his body, your 
lordship will easily see that the body he had when an embryo in the womb, 
when a child playing in coats, when a man marrying a wife, and when bed-rid 
dying of a consumption, and at last, which he shall have after his resurrection, 
are each of them his body, though neither of them be the same body, the one 
with the other. 

But farther, to your lordship's question, Can these words be understood of 
any other material substance but that body in which these things were done? I 
answer, These words of St Paul may be understood of another material sub- 
stance than that body in which these things were done, because your lordship 
teaches me, and gives me strong reason so to understand them. Your lordship 
says, *That you do not say the same particles of matter which the sinner had 
at the very time of the commission of his sins, shall be raised at the last day. 
And your lordship gives this reason for it: fFor then a long sinner must have a 
vast body, considering the continued spending of particles by perspiration 
Now, my lord, if the apostle's words, as your lordship would argue, cannot be 
understood of any other material substance, but that body in which these things 
were done 5 and no body, upon the removal or change of some of the particles 
that at any time make it up, is the same material substance or the same body; 
it will, I think, thence follow, that either the sinner must have all the same 
individual particles vitally united to his soul when he is raised that he had vitally 
united to his soul when he sinned, or else St Paul's words here cannot be un- 
derstood to mean the same body in which the things were done. For if there 
were other particles of matter in the body, wherein the things were done, than 
in that which is raised, that which is raised cannot be the same body in whieh 
they were done: unless that alone, which has just all the same individual par- 
ticles when any action is done, being the same body wherein it was done, that 
also, which has not the same individual particles wherein that action was done, 
can be the same body wherein it was done; which is in effect to make the same 
body sometimes to be the same, and sometimes not the same. 

Your lordship thinks it suffices to make the same body to have not all, but 
no other particles of matter, but such as were some time or other vitally united 
to the soul before; but such a body, made up of part of the particles some time 
or other vitally united to the soul, is no more the same body wherein the 
actions were done in the distant parts of the long sinner's life, than that is the 
same body in which a quarter, or half, or three-quarters of the same particles 
that made it up are wanting. For example, a sinner has acted here in his body 
an hundred years; he is raised at the last day, but with what body? The same, 
says your lordship, that he acted in; because St Paul says, he must receive the 
things done in his body. What therefore must his body at the resurrection con- 
sist of? Must it consist of all the particles of matter that have ever been vitally 
united to his soul? for they, in succession, have all of them made up his body 
wherein he did these things: No, says your lordship,^: that would make his body 
too vast; it suffices to make the same body in which these things were done, 
that it consists of some of the particles, and no other, but such as were some 
time during his life vitally united to his soul. But, according to this account, 
his body at the resurrection being, as your lordship seems to limit it, near the 
same size it was in some part of his life, it will be no more the same body 
in which the things were done in the distant parts of his life, than that is the 
same body in which half, or three quarters, or more of the individual matter 
that then made it up, is now wanting. For example, let his body at fifty years 
old consist of a million of parts; five hundred thousand at least of those parts 
will be different from those which made up his body at ten years, and at an 
hundred. So that to take the numerical particles that made up his body at fifty, 
or any other season of his life, or to gather them promiscuously out of those 

* 2d Answer. t Ibid. J Ibid. 



222 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

which at different times have successively been vitally united to his soul, they 
will no more make the same body which was his, wherein some of his actions 
were done, than that is the same body which has but half the same particles: 
and yet all your lordship's argument here for the same body is, because St Paul 
says it must be his body in which these things were done; which it could not 
he if any other substance were joined to it, i. e. if any other particles of matter 
made up the body which were not vitally united to the soul when the action 
was done. 

Again, your lordship says,* That you do not say the same individual par- 
ticles [shall make up the body at the resurrection] which were united at the 
point of death, for there must be a great alteration in them in a lingering dis- 
ease, as if a fat man falls into a consumption. Because it is likely your lord- 
ship thinks these particles of a decrepit, wasted, withered body would be too few, 
or unfit to make such a plump, strong, vigorous, well-sized body, as it has 
pleased your lordship to proportion out in your thoughts to men at the resur- 
rection; and therefore some small portion of the particles formerly united vitally 
to that man's soul shall be resumed, to make up his body to the bulk your lord- 
ship judges convenient; but the greatest part of them shall be left out, to avoid 
the making his body more vast than your lordship thinks will be fit, as appears 
by these your lordship's words immediately following, viz. fThat you do not 
say the same particles the sinner had at the very time of commission of his sins: 
for then a long sinner must have a vast body. 

But then pray, my lord, what must an embryo do, who, dying within a few 
hours after his body was vitally united to his soul, has no particles of matter 
which were formerly vitally united to it, to make up his body of that size and 
proportion which your lordship seems to require in bodies at the resurrection? 
Or must we believe he shall remain content with that small pittance of matter, 
and that yet imperfect body to eternity, because it is an article of faith to believe 
the resurrection of the very same body, i. e. made up of only such particles as 
have been vitally united to the soul? For if it be so, as your lordship says,^: 
That life is the result of the union of soul and body, it will follow, that the 
body of an embryo dying in the womb may be very little, not the thousandth 
part of any ordinaiy man. For since from the first conception and beginning 
of formation it has life, and " life is the result of the union of the soul with the 
body," an embryo, that shall die either by the untimely death of the mother, or 
by any other accident, presently after it has life, must, according to your lord- 
ship's doctrine, remain a man not an inch long to eternity ; because there are not 
particles of matter formerly united to his soul, to make him bigger, and no 
other can be made use of to that purpose; though what greater congruity the 
soul hath with any particles of matter which were once vitally united to it, but 
are now so no longer, than it hath with particles of matter which it was never 
united to, would be hard to determine, if that should be demanded. 

By these and not a few other the like consequences, one may see what service 
they do to religion and the Christian doctrine, who raise questions and make 
articles of faith about the resurrection of the same body, where the Scripture 
says nothing of the same body; or if it does, it is with no small reprimand§ to 
those who make such an inquiry. " But some man will say, How are the dead 
raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou 
sowest is not quickened except it die. And that which thou sowest, thou sowest 
not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some 
other grain. But God giveth it a body, as it hath pleased him." Words, J 
should think, sufficient to deter us from determining any thing for or against 
the same bodies being raised at the last day. It suffices that all the dead shall 
be raised, and every one appear and answer for the things done in his life, and 
receive according to the things he has done in his body, whether good or bad. 
lie that believes this, and has said nothing inconsistent herewith, I presume may 
and must be acquitted from being guilty of any thing inconsistent with the 
ai tide of the resurrection of the dead. 

* 2d Answer. t Ibid. \ Ibid. § 1 Cor. xv. 35, &c. 



Ch. 27. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 223 

But your lordship, to prove the resurrection of the same hody to be an article 
ot faith, farther asks*, " How could it be said, if any other substance be joined 
to the soul at the resurrection, as its body, that they were the things done in 
or by the body?" Answer. Just as it may be said of a man at an hundred years 
old, that hath then another substance joined to his soul than he had at twenty, 
that the murder or drunkenness he was guilty of at twenty were things done in 
the body: how " by the body" comes in here I do not see. 

Your lordship adds, "And St Paul's dispute about the manner of raising the 
body might soon have ended, if there were no necessity of the same body." 
Answer. When I understand what argument there is in these words to prove 
the resurrection of the same body, without the mixture of one new atom of 
matter, T shall know what to say to it. In the mean time this I understand, that 
St Paul would have put as short an end to all disputes about this matter if he 
had said, that there was a necessity of the same body, or that it should be the 
same body. 

The next text of Scripture you bring for the same body is, " If there be no 
resurrection of the dead, then is not Christ raisedf." From which your lorrt- 
ship argues, ^"It seems then other bodies are to be raised as his was." I grant 
other dead, as certainly raised as Christ was; for else his resurrection would be 
of no use to mankind. But I do not see how it follows, that they shall be raised 
with the same body, as Christ was raised with the same body, as your lordship 
infers in these words annexed: " And can there be any doubt, whether his body 
was the same material substance which was united to his soul before?" I answer, 
None at all: nor that it had just the same distinguishing lineaments and marks, 
yea, and the same wounds that it had at the time of his death. If, therefore, your 
lordship will argue from other bodies being raised as his was, that they must 
keep proportion with his in sameness; then we must believe that every man 
shall be raised with the same limeaments and other notes of distinction he had 
at the time of his death, even with his wounds yet open, if he had any, because 
our Saviour was so raised; which seems to me scarce reconcilable with what 
your lordship says, of a fat man falling into a consumption, and dying§. 

But whether it will consist or no with your lordship's meaning in that place, 
this to me seems a consequence that will need to be better proved, viz. That our 
bodies must be raised the same, just as our Saviour's was: because St Paul says, 
" if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is not Christ risen." For it may 
be a good consequence, Christ is risen, and therefore there shall be a resurrec- 
tion of the dead; and yet this may not be a good consequence, Christ w r as raised 
with the same body he had at his death, therefore all men shall be raised with 
the same body they had at their death, contrary to what your lordship says con- 
cerning a fat man dying of a consumption. But the case I think far different 
betwixt our Saviour and those to be raised at the last day. 

1. His body saw not corruption, and therefore to give him another body new 
moulded, mixed with other particles, which were not contained in it as it lay in 
the grave, whole and entire as it was laid there, had been to destroy his body to 
frame him a new one without any need. But why with the remaining particles 
of a man's body, long since dissolved and mouldered into dust and atoms, 
(whereof possibly a great part may have undergone variety of changes, and en- 
tered into other concretions, even in the bodies of other men) other new par 
tides of matter mixed with them, may not serve to make his body again, as well 
as the mixture of new and different particles of matter with the old did in the 
compass of his life make his body, I think no reason can be given. 

This may serve to show why, though the materials of our Saviour's body were 
not changed at his resurrection, yet it does not follow, but that the body of a 
man dead and rotten in his grave, or burnt, may at the last day have several new 
particles in it, and that without any inconvenience: since whatever matter is 
vitally united to his soul is his body, as much as is that which was united to it 
when he was born, or in any other part of his life. 

2. In the next place, the size, shape, figure, and lineaments of our Saviour's 

* 2d Answer. t 1 Cor. xv. 16. ^ 2d Answer. $ Ibid. 



224 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

body, even to his wounds, into which doubting Thomas put his fingers and his 
hand, were to be kept in the raised body of our Saviour, the same they were at 
his death, to be a conviction to his disciples, to whom he showed himself, and 
who were to be witnesses of his resurrection, that their master, the very same 
man, was crucified, dead, and buried, and raised again; and therefore he was 
handled by them, and eat before them after he was risen, to give them in all 
points full satisfaction that it was really he, the same, and not another, nor a 
spectre or apparition of him: though I do not think, your lordship will thence 
argue, that because others are to be raised as he was, therefore it is necessary to 
believe, that because he eat after his resurrection, others at the last day shall eat 
and drink after they are raised from the dead; which seems to me as good an 
argument as because his undissolved body was raised out of the grave, just as it 
there lay entire, without the mixture of any new particles; therefore the cor- 
rupted and consumed bodies of the dead, at the resurrection, shall be newly 
framed only out of those scattered particles which were once vitally united to 
their souls, without the least mixture of any one single atom of new matter. But 
at the last day, when all men are raised, there will be no need to be assured of 
any one particular man's resurrection. It is enough that every one shall appear 
before the judgment-seat of Christ, to receive according to what he had done in 
his former life: but in what sort of body he shall appear, or of what particles 
made up, the Scripture having said nothing, but that it shall be a spiritual body 
raised in incorruption, it is not for me to determine. 

Your lordship asks*, " Were they [who saw our Saviour after his resurrection] 
witnesses only of some material substance then united to his soul ?" In answer, 
I beg your lordship to consider, whether you suppose our Saviour was to be 
known to be the same man (to the witnesses that were to see him, and testify his 
resurrection) by his soul, that could be neither seen nor known to be the same; 
or by his body, that could be seen, and by the discernible structure and marks 
of it, be known to be the same ? When your lordship has resolved that, all that 
you say in that page will answer itself. But because one man cannot know 
another to be the same, but by the outward visible lineaments and sensible marks 
he has been want to be known and distinguished by, will your lordship therefore 
argue, that the Great Judge, at the last day, who gives to each man, whom he 
raises, his new body, shall not be able to know who is who, unless he give to 
every one of them a body just of the same figure, size, and features, and made 
up of the very same individual particles he had in his former life t Whether 
such a way of arguing for the resurrection of the same body, to be an article of 
faith, contributes much to the strengthening of the credulity of the article of the 
resurrection of the dead, I shall leave to the judgment of others. 

Farther, for the proving the resurrection of the same body to be an article of 
faith, your lordship saysf, " But the apostle insists upon the resurrection of 
Christ, not merely as an argument of the possibility of ours, but of the certainty 
of it: because he rose as the first-fruits; Christ the first-fruits, afterward they 
that are Christ's at his coming:):." Answer. No doubt, the resurrection of Christ 
is a proof of the certainty of our resurrection. But is it therefore a proof of the 
resurrection of the same body, consisting of the same individual particles which 
concurred to the making up of our body here, without the mixture of any one 
other particle of matter ? I confess I see no such consequence. 

But your lordship goes on§; "St Paul was aware of the objections in men's 
minds about the resurrection of the same body; and it is of great consequence 
as to this article, to show upon what grounds he proceeds. 'But some men 
will say, How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come ? ! 
First, he shows, that the seminal parts of plants are wonderfully improved by 
the ordinary providence of God, in the manner of their vegetation." Answer. 
I do not perfectly understand what it is "for the seminal parts of plants to be 
wonderfully improved by the ordinary providence of God, in the manner of their 
vegetation:" or else, perhaps, I should better see how this here tends to the 
proof of the resurrection of the same body, in your lordship's sense. 

* 2d Answer. t Ibid. \ 1 Cor. xv. 20, 23. § 2d Answer. 



Ch. 27. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 225 

It continues*, "They sow bare grain of -wheat, or of some other grain, but 
God giveta it a body, as it bath pleased him, and to every seed his own body- 
Here," says your lordship, " is an identity of the material substance supposed.'* 
It may be so. But to me a diversity of the material substance, i. e. of the com- 
ponent particles, is here supposed, or in direct words said. For the words of 
St Paul, taken all together, run thust, "That which thou sowest, thou sowest 
not that body which shall be, but bare grain;" and so on, as your lordship has 
set down in the remainder of them. From which words of St Paul, the na- 
tural argument seems to me to stand thus: if the body that is put in the earth in 
sowing is not that body which shall be, then the body that is put in the grave is 
not that, *. e. the same body, that shall be. 

But your lordship proves it to be the same body by these three Greek words 
of the text, to ijiov cru/ua., which your lordship interprets thus}, "That proper 
body which belongs to it. " Answer. Indeed by those Greek words to thov 
cru/xa., whether our translators have rightly rendered them "his own body," 
or your lordship more rightly "that proper body which belongs to it," I for- 
merly understood no more but this, that in the production of wheat, and other 
grain from seed, God continued every species distinct; so that from grains of 
•wheat sown, root, stalk, blade, ear, grains of wheat were produced, and not 
those of barley; and so of the rest, which I took to be the meaning of "to every 
seed his own body. " No, says your lordship, these words prove, that to every 
plant of wheat, and to every grain of wheat produced in it, is given the proper 
body that belongs to it, which is the same body with the grain that was sown. 
Answer. This, I confess, I do not understand; because I do not understand how 
one individual grain can be the same with twenty, fifty, or an hundred individual 
grains; for such sometimes is the increase. 

But your lordship proves it. "For," says your lordship§, "Every seed having 
that body in little, which is afterward so much enlarged; and in grain the seed is 
corrupted before its germination; but it hath its proper organical parts, which 
make it the same body with that which it grows up to. For although grain be 
not divided into lobes, as other seeds are, yet it hath been found, by the most 
accurate observations, that upon separating the membranes, these seminal parts 
are discerned in them; which afterwards grow up to that body which we call corn. " 
In which words I crave leave to observe, that your lordship supposes, that a 
body may be enlarged by the addition of an hundred or a thousand times as mueh 
in bulk as its own matter, and yet continue the same body; which, I confess, I 
cannot understand. 

But in the next place, if that could be so, and that the plant, in its full growth 
at aarvest, increased by a thousand or a million of times as much new matter 
added to it, as it had when it lay a little concealed in the grain that was sown, 
was the very same body; yet I do not think that your lordship will say, that 
every minute, insensible, and inconceivably small grain of the hundred grains, 
contained in that little organized seminal plant, is every one of them the very 
same with that grain which contains that whole seminal plant and all those in- 
visible grains in it. For then it will follow, that one grain is the same with an 
hundred, and an hundred distinct grains the same with one: which I shall be 
able to assent to, when I can conceive, that all the wheat in the world is but one 
grain. 

For I beseech you, my lord, consider what it is St Paul here speaks of: it ia 
plain he speaks of that which is sown and dies, i. e. the grain that the husband- 
man takes out of his barn to sow in his field. And of this grain St Paul says, 
" that it is not that body that shall be." These two, viz. " that which is sown 
and that body that shall be," are all the bodies that St Paul here speaks of to 
represent the agreement or difference of men's bodies after the resurrection 
with those they had before they died. Now, 1 crave leave to ask your lordship, 
which of these two is that little invisible seminal plant, which your lordship 
here speaks of? Does your lordship mean by it the grain that is sown ? But 
that is not what St Paul speaks of; he could not mean this embryonated little 

* 2d Answer. + V. 37. $ 2d Answer. § Ibid. 

2 D 



226 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

plant, for he could not denote it by these words, "that which thou sowest,"for 
that he says must die: but this little ernbryonated plant, contained in the seed 
that is sown, dies not; or does your lordship mean by it, "the body that shall 
be?" But neither by these words, "the body that shall be," can St Paul be 
supposed to denote this insensible little ernbryonated plant; for that is already 
in being, contained in the seed that is sown, and therefore could not be spoken 
of under the name of the body that shall be. And, therefore, I confess I cannot 
see of what use it is to your lordship to introduce here this third body, which 
St Paul mentions not, and to make that the same, or not the same with any 
other, when those which St Paul speaks of are, as I humbly conceive, these 
two visible sensible bodies, the grain sown, and the corn grown up to ear: with 
neither of which this insensible ernbryonated plant can be the same body, unless 
an insensible body can be the same body with a sensible body, and a little body 
can be the same body with one ten thousand, or an hundred thousand times as 
big as itself. So that yet, I confess, I see not the resurrection of the same body 
proved, from these words of St Paul, to be an article of faith. 

Your lordship goes on*: "St Paul indeed saith, that Ave sow not that body 
that shall be; but he speaks not of the identity, but the perfection of it." Here 
my understanding fails me again: for I cannot understand St Paul to say, that 
the same identical sensible grain of wheat, which was sown at seed-time, is the 
very same with every grain of wheat in the ear at harvest that sprang from it: 
yet so I must understand it, to make it prove, that the same sensible body that 
is laid in the grave, shall be the very same with that which shall be raised at the 
resurrection. For I do not know of any seminal body in little, contained in the 
dead carcass of any man or woman, which, as your lordship says, in seeds, 
having its proper organ ical parts, shall afterwards be enlarged, and at the resur- 
rection grow up into the same man. For I never thought of any seed, or seminal 
parts, either of plant or animal, " so wonderfully improved by the providence 
of God," whereby the same plant or animal should beget itself; nor ever heard 
that it was by divine Providence designed to produce the same individual, but 
for the producing of future and distinct individuals for the continuation of the 
same species. 

Your lordship's next words aref; "and although there be such a difference 
from the grain itself, when it comes up to be perfect corn, with root, stalk, blade, 
and ear, that it may be said to outwai'd appearance not to be the same body; 
yet with regard to the seminal and organical parts, it is as much the same, as a 
man grown up is the same with the embryo in the Avomb. Answer. It does 
not appear by any thing I can find in the text, that St Paul here compared the 
body produced, with the seminal and organical parts contained in the grain it 
sprang from, but with the whole sensible grain that was grown. Microscopes 
had not then discovered the little embryo plant in the seed: and supposing it 
should have been revealed to St Paul, (though in the Scripture we find little 
revelation of natural philosophy,) yet an argument taken from a thing perfectly 
unknown to the Corinthians, whom he writ to, could be of no manner of use to 
them: nor serve at all either to instruct or to convince them. But granting that 
those St Paul writ to knew it as well as Mr Lewenhoek; yet your lordship 
thereby proves not the rising of the same body; your lordship says, it is as much 
the same [I crave leave to add body] "as a man grown up is the same" (same 
what, I beseech your lordship?) "with the embryo in the womb. " For that the 
body of the embryo in the womb, and body of the man grown up, is the same 
body, I think no one will say; unless he can persuade himself that a body that 
is not the hundredth part of another, is the same with that other; which I think 
no one will do, till having renounced this dangerous way by ideas of thinking 
and reasoning, he has learnt to say, that a part and the whole are the same. 

Your lordship goes on|, "And although many arguments are used to prove 
that a man is not the same, because life, which depends upon the course of the 
blood, and the manner of respiration, and nutrition, is so different in both 
states; yet that man would be thought ridiculous that should seriously affirm 

* 2d Answer. f Ibid. J Ibid. 



Ch. 27. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 227 

that it was not the same man." And } r our lordship says, "I grant that the 
variation of great parcels of matter in plants, alters not the identity; and that the 
organization of the parts in one coherent hody, partaking of one common life, 
makes the identity of a plant." Answer. My lord, I think the question is not 
about the same man, but the same body. Fq* though I do say*, (somewhat dif- 
ferently from what your lordship se f ' Qemn .s my words here) " that that which 
has such an organization, as is fit t x£ ?*?? and distribute nourishment, so as to 
continue and frame the wood, bark, atTu.\eaves, &c. of a plant, in which consists 
the vegetable life, continues to be the same plant, as long as it partakes of the 
same life, though that life be communicated to new particles of matter, vitally 
united to the living plant;" yet I do not remember that I any where say, that a 
plant, which was once no bigger than an oaten straw, and afterward grows to be 
above a fathom about, is the same body, though it be still the same plant. 

The well-known tree in Epping Forest, called the King's Oak, which, from 
not weighing an ounce at first, grew to have many tons of timber in it, was all 
along the same oak, the very same plant; but nobody, I think, will say that it 
was the same body when it weighed a ton, as it was when it weighed but an 
ounce, unless he has a mind to signalize himself by saying, that that is the 
same body, which has a thousand different particles of matter in it, for one par- 
ticle that is the same; which is no better than to say, that a thousand different 
particles are but one and the same particle, and one and the same particle is a 
thousand different particles; a thousand times a greater absurdity, than to say half 
is the whole, or the whole is the same with the half; which will be improved ten 
thousand times yet farther, if a man shall say (as your lordship seems to me to 
argue here) that that great oak is the very same body with the acorn it sprang 
from, because there was in that acorn an oak in little, which was afterward (as 
your lordship expresses it) so much enlarged, as to make that mighty tree. 
For this embryo, if I may so call it, or oak in little, being not the hundredth, or 
perhaps the thousandth part of the acorn, and the acorn being not the thousandth 
part of the grown oak, it will be very extraordinary to prove the acorn and the 
grown oak to be the same body, by a way wherein it cannot be pretended that 
above one particle of an hundred thousand, or a million, is the same in the one 
body that it was in the other. From which way of reasoning, it will follow, 
that a nurse and her sucking child have the same body, and be past doubt, that 
a mother and her infant have the same body. But this is a way of certainty 
found out to establish the articles of faith, and to overturn the new method of 
certainty that your lordship says I have started, which is apt to leave men's 
minds more doubtful than before. 

And now I desire your lordship to consider of what use it is to you .in the 
present case, to quote out of my essay these words, "that partaking of one 
common life, makes the identity of a plant;" since the question is not about the 
identity of a plant, but about the identity of a body; it being a very different 
thing to be the same plant, and to be the same body. For that which makes the 
same plant, does not make the same body; the one being the partaking in the 
same continued vegetable life, the other- the consisting of the same numerical par- 
ticles of matter. And therefore your lordship's inference from my words above 
quoted, in these which you subjoinf, seems to me a very strange one, viz. " so 
that in things capable of any sort of life, the identity is consistent with a con- 
tinued succession of parts; and so the wheat grown up is the same body with the 
grain that was sown." For I believe, if my words, from which you infer, "and 
so the wheat grown up is the same body with the grain that was sown," were 
put into a syllogism, this Avould hardly be brought to be the conclusion. 

But your lordship goes on with consequence upon consequence, though I have 
not eyes acute enough every where to see the connexion, till you bring it to the 
resurrection of the same body. The connexion of your lordship's wordsj is as 
followeth, "and thus the alteration of the parts of the body at the resurrection, 
is consistent with its identity, if its organization and life be the same: and this 
is a real identity of the body, which depends not upon consciousness. From 

* Essay, b. 2. c. 27, sect. 4. f 2d Answer. } Ibid. 



228 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

whence it follows, that to make the same body, no more is required, but restor- 
ing life to the organized parts of it." If the question were about raising the 
same plant, I do not say but there might be some appearance for making such 
an inference from my words as this. " Whence it follows, that to make the 
same plant, no more is required , hot to restore life to the organized parts of it." 
But this deduction; wherein, from , ,«e words of mine that speak only of the 
identity of a plant, your lordship intt, s, there is no more required to make the 
same body, than to make the same ph.nt; being too subtle for me, I leave to my 
reader to find out. 

Your lordship goes on and says*, "That I grant likewise, that the identity 
of the same man consists in a participation of the same continued life, by con- 
stantly fleeting particles of matter in succession, vitally united to the same or- 
ganized body." Answer. I speak in these words of the identity of the same 
man, and your lordship thence roundly concludes; " so that there is no diffi- 
culty of the sameness of the body." But your lordship knows, that I do not 
take these two sounds, man and body, to stand for the same thing, nor the iden- 
tity of the man to be the same with the identity of the body. 

But let us read out your lordship's wordsf. "So that there is no difficulty 
as to the sameness of the body, if life were continued; and if, by divine power, 
life be restored to that material substance which was before united, by a reunion 
of the soul to it, there is no reason to deny the identity of the body, not from 
the consciousness of the soul, but from that life which is the result of the union 
of the soul and body." 

If I understand your lordship right, you in these words, from the passages 
above quoted out of my book, argue, that from those words of mine it will fol- 
low, that it is or may be the same body, that is raised at the resurrection. If so, 
my lord, your lordship has then proved, that my book is not inconsistent with, 
but conformable to this article of the resurrection of the same body, which your 
lordship contends for, and will have to be an article of faith; for though 1 do by 
no means deny that the same bodies shall be raised at the last day, yet I see 
nothing your lordship has said to prove it to be an article of faith. 

But your lordship goe ^ on with your proofs, and says:):, "But St Paul still 
supposes, that it must be that material substance to which the soul was before 
united. For, saith he, 'it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption: it 
is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness, it is raised in 
power: it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.' Can such a ma- 
terial substance, which was never united to the body, be said to be sown in cor- 
ruption, and weakness and dishonour? either, therefore, he must speak of the 
body, or his meaning cannot be comprehended." I answer, "Can such a 
material substance, which was never laid in the grave, be said to be sown,"&c. ? 
For your lordship says§, "You do not say the same individual particles, which 
were united at the point of death, shall be raised on the last day;" and no other 
particles are laid in the grave, but such as are united at the point of death; either 
therefore your lordship must speak of another body, different from that which 
was sjwn, which shall be raised, or else your meaning, I think, cannot be com- 
prehended. 

But whatever be your meaning, your lordship proves it to be St Paul's mean- 
ing, that the same body shall be raised which was sown, in these following 
words||, "For what does all this relate to a conscious principle?" Answer. 
The Scripture being express, that the same person should be raised and appear 
before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive according to what 
he had done in his body; it was very well suited to common comprehensions 
(which refined not about "particles that had been vitally united to the soul") 
to speak of the body which each one was to have after the resurrection, as he 
would be apt to speak of it himself. For it being his body both before and after 
the resurrection, every one ordinarily speaks of his body as the same, though, in 
a strict and philosophical sense, as your lordship speaks, it be not the very same. 
Thus it is no impropriety of speech to say, "This body of mine, which was 

* 2d Answer. f Ibid. $ Ibid. § Ibid. fl Ibid. 



Ch. 27. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 229 

formerly strong and plump, is now weak and wasted," though in such a sense as 
you are speaking here, it be not the same body. Revelation declares nothing 
any where concerning the same body in your lordship's sense of the same body, 
which appears not to have been thought of. The apostle directly proposes no- 
thing for or against the same body, as necessary to be believed: that which he is 
plain and direct in, is opposing and condemning such curious questions about 
the body, which could serve only to perplex, not to confirm what was material 
and necessary for them to believe, viz. a day of judgment and retribution to men 
in a future state; and therefore it is no wonder, that mentioning their bodies, he 
should use a way of speaking suited to vulgar notions, (from which it would be 
hard positively to conclude any thing for the determining of this question espe- 
cially against expressions in the same discourse that plainly incline to the other 
side,) in a matter which, as it appears, the apostle though not necessary to de- 
termine, and the spirit of God thought not fit to gratify any one's curiosity in. 

But your lordship says*, " The apostle speaks plainly of that body which was 
once quickened, and afterwards falls to corruption, and is to be restored with 
more noble qualities." I wish your lordship had quoted the words of St Paul, 
wherein he speaks plainly of that numerical body that was once quickened; they 
would presently decide this question. But your lordship proves it by these 
following words of St Paul: " For this corruption must put on incorruption, and 
this mortal must put on immortality;" to which your lordship adds, "that you 
do not see how he could more expressly affirm the identity of this corruptible 
body, with that after the resurrection." How expressly it is affirmed by the 
apostle, shall be considered by and by. In the mean time, it is past doubt, that 
your lordship best knows what you do or do not see. But this 1 would be bold 
to say, that if St Paul had any where in this chapter (where there are so many 
>ccasions for it, if it had been necessary to have been believed) but said in express 
/ords that the same bodies should be raised, every one else, who thinks of it, 
rill see he had more expressly affirmed the identity of the bodies which men now 
lave, with those they shall have after the resurrection. 

The remainder of your lordship's period isf; "And that without any respect 
to the principle of self-consciousness." Ans. These words, I doubt not, have 
some meaning, but I must own I know not what; either towards the. proof of 
the resurrection of the same body, or to show, that any thing I have said concern- 
ing self-consciousness, is inconsistent: for I do not remember that 1 have any 
where said, that the identity of body consisted in self-consciousness. 

From your preceding words, your lordship concludes thusj: "And so if the 
Scripture be the sole foundation of our faith, this is an article of it." My lord, 
to make the conclusion unquestionable, I humbly conceive the words must run 
thus: "And so if the Scripture, and your lordship's interpretation of it be the 
sole foundation of our faith, the resurrection of the same body is an article of it. " 
For, with submission, your lordship has neither produced express words of Scrip- 
ture for it, nor so proved that to be the meaning of any of those words of Scrip- 
ture which you have produced for it, that a man who reads and sincerely endea- 
vours to understand the Scripture, cannot but find himself obliged to believe, as 
expressly, " that the same bodies of the dead," in your lordship's sense, shall be 
raised, as " that the dead shall be raised." And 1 crave leave to give your lord- 
ship this one reason for it. He who reads with attention this discourse of St 
Paul§, where he discourses of the resurrection, will see, that he plainly distin* 
guishes between the dead that shall be raised, and the bodies of the dead. For it is 
vtK^ot, rrxvrts, oi, are the nominative cases to|| zyti^ovrcti, £ceo7roinbn<Tovrxi f \yzQ%&- 
aoYTdLi, all along, and not crafAnru., bodies; which one may with reason think would 
some where or other have been expressed, if all this had been said to propose it as 
an article of faith, that the very same bodies should be raised. The same manner of 
speaking the spirit of God observes all through the New Testament, where it is 
saidt," raise the dead, quicken or make alive the dead, the resurrection of the 

* 2d Answer, t Ibid. } Ibid. § 1 Cor. xv. || V. 15, 22, 23, 29, 32, 35, 52. 
1 Matt. xxii. 31. Markxii.26. John v. 21. Acts xvi. 7. Rom. iv. 17. 
2 Cor. i. 9. 1 Thess. iv. 14, 16. 



230 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book % 

dead." Nay, these very words of our Saviour*, urged by your lordship for the 
resurrection of the same body, run thus, na.vr«c oi h role /uvufAtioic. etnova-ovreti t«c 
<pa>viis avrov net) iK7rogiv<roVTAi, oi ret etya.$et7rotYicrttvris tie etvctsreto-iv £&>«?, oi £e ret 
<pxv\et 7r£ct%ctvric. tis ctvctr&o-iv K^icrmc. Would not a well-meaning searcher of the 
Scriptures be apt to think, that if the thing here intended by our Saviour were to 
teach, and propose it as an article of faith, necessary to be believed by every one, 
that the very same bodies of the dead should be raised; would not, I say, any one 
be apt to think, that if our Saviour meant so, the words should rather have been, 
ir&vrct ret o~a>/uetret «, iv role juv»/u.uois, i. e. " all the bodies that are in the graves," 
rather than "all who are in the graves;" which must denote persons, and not 
precisely bodies? 

Another evidence, that St Paul makes a distinction between the dead and the 
bodies of the dead, so that the dead cannot be taken in this, 1 Cor. xv. to stand 
precisely for the bodies of the dead, are these words of the apostlef, " but some 
men will say, how are the dead raised? And with what body do they come?" 
Which words, " dead" and " they," if supposed to stand precisely for the bodies 
of the dead, the question will run thus: " How are the dead bodies raised? And 
with what bodies do the dead bodies come?" Which seems to have no very 
agreeable sense. 

This therefore being so, that the spirit of God keeps so expressly to this phrase, 
or form of speaking in the New Testament, "of raising, quickening, rising, 
resurrection, &c. of the dead," where the resurrection of the last day is spoken 
of; and that the body is not mentioned, but in answer to this question, " With 
what bodies shall those dead, who are raised, come?" so that by the dead cannot 
precisely be meant the dead bodies: I do not see but a good Christian, who reads 
the Scripture with an intention to believe all that is there revealed to him concern- 
ing the resurrection, may acquit himself of his duty therein, without entering 
into the inquiry, whether the dead shall have the very same bodies or no? Which 
sort of inquiry the apostle, by the appellation he bestows here on him that makes 
it, seems not much to encourage. Nor, if he shall think himself bound to deter- 
mine concerning the identity of the bodies of the dead raised at the last day, will 
he, by the remainder of St Paul's answer, find the determination of the Apostle 
to be much in favour of the very same body; unless the being told, that the body 
sown, is not that body that shall be; that the body raised is as different from that 
which was laid down, as the flesh of man is from the flesh of beasts, fishes, and 
birds; or as the sun, moon, and stars are different one from another; or as different 
as a corruptible, weak, natural, mortal body, is from an incorruptible, powerful, 
spiritual, immortal body; and lastly, as different as a body that is flesh and blood, 
is from a body that is not flesh and blood: " for flesh and blood cannot," says St 
Paul, in this very place:):, "inherit the kingdom of God*:" unless, I say, all this 
which is contained in St Paul's words, can be supposed to be the way to deliver 
this as an article of faith, which is required to be believed by every one, viz. 
" That the dead should be raised with the very same bodies that they had before 
in this life;" which article proposed in these or the like plain and express words, 
could have left no room for doubt in the meanest capacities, nor for contest in the 
most perverse minds. 

Your lordship adds in the next words§, "And so it hath been always under- 
stood by the Christian church, viz. That the resurrection of the same body, in 
your lordship's sense of the same body, is an article of faith." Answer. What 
the Christian church has always \inderstood, is beyond my knowledge. But for 
those who coming short of your lordship's great learning cannot gather their arti- 
cles of faith from the understanding of all the whole Christian church, ever since 
the preaching of the gospel, (who make the far greater part of Christians, I think 
1 may say nine hundred ninety and nine of a thousamd) but are forced to have re- 
course to the Scripture to find them there, I do not see, that they will easily find 
there this proposed as an article of faith, that there shall be a resurrection of the 
same body; but that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, without explicitly 
determining, that they shall be raised with bodies made up wholly of the same 

* John v. 28, 29. f V. 35. % V. 50. § 2d Answer. 



Ch. 27. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 231 

particles, which were once vitally united to their souls in their former life, with- 
out the mixture of any one other particle of matter, which is that which your 
lordship means by the same body. 

But supposing your lordship to have demonstrated this to be an article of faith, 
though I crave leave to own, that I do not see that all that your lordship has said 
here makes it so much as probable ; what is all this to me ? Yes, says your lord- 
ship in the following words,* "My idea of personal identity is inconsistent with 
it, for it makes the same body which was here united to the soul, not to be ne- 
cessary to the doctrine of the resurrection. Bat any material substance united 
to the same principle of consciousness, makes the same body." 

This is an argument of your lordship's which I am obliged to answer to. But 
is it not fit that 1 should first understand it before I answer it ? Now here 1 do not 
^ell know what it is " to make a thing not to be necessary to the doctrine of the 
resurrection." But to help myself out the best I can, with a guess, I will con- 
jecture (which, in disputing with learned men, is not very safe) your lordship's 
meaning is, that "my idea of personal identity makes it not necessary" that for 
the raising the same person the body should be the same. 

Your lordship's next word is " but ;" to which I am ready to reply, but what? 
What does my idea of personal identity do ? For something of that kind the 
adversative particle " but" should, in the ordinary construction of our language, 
introduce, to make the proposition clear and intelligible : but here is no such 
thing. " But" is one of your lordship's privileged particles, which I must not 
meddle with, for fear your lordship complain of me again, " as so severe a critic, 
that for the least ambiguity in any particle, fill up pages in my answer, to make 
ray book look considei*able lor the bulk of it. " But since this proposition here, 
"my idea of personal identity makes the same body which was here united to 
the soul, not necessary to the doctrine of the resurrection, but any material sub- 
stance being united to the same principle of consciousness, makes the same body," 
is brought to prove my idea of personal identity inconsistent with the article of 
the resurrection ; I must make it out in some direct sense or other, that I may 
see whether it be both true and conclusive. I therefore venture to read it thus: 
"My idea of personal identity makes the same body which was here united to 
the soul, not to be necessary at the resurrection ; but allows, that any material 
substance being united to the same principle of consciousness, makes the same 
body. Ergo, my idea of personal identity is inconsistent with the article of the 
resurrection of the same body." 

If this be your lordship's sense in this passage, as I here have guessed it to be, 
or else I know not what it is, I answer, 

1. That my idea of personal identity does not allow that any material sub- 
stance, being united to the same principle of consciousness, makes the same 
body. I say no such thing in my book, nor any thing from whence it may be 
inferred ; and your lordship would have done me a favour to have set down the 
words where I say so, or those from which you infer so, and showed how it fol- 
lows from any thing I have said. 

2. Granting, that it were a consequence from my idea of personal identity, that 
"any material substance, being united to the same principle of consciousness, 
makes the same body;" this would not prove that my idea of personal identity was 
inconsistent with this proposition, " that the same body shall be raised," but, on 
the contrary, affirms it: since, if I affirm, as I do, that the same person shall be 
raised, and it be a consequence of my idea of personal identity, that " any mate- 
rial substance being united to the same principle of consciousness, makes the same 
body;" it follows, that if the same person be raised, the same body must be raised, 
and so I have herein not only said nothing inconsistent with the resurrection of the 
same body, but have said more for it than your lordship. For there can be nothing 
plainer, than that in the Scripture it is revealed, that the same persons shall be 
raised, and appear before the judgment seat of Christ, to answer for what they 
have done in their bodies. If, therefore, whatever matter be joined to the same 

* 2d Answer. 



232 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

principle of consciousness makes the same body, it is demonstration, that if th«* 
same persons are raised, they have the same bodies. 

How, then, your lordship makes this an inconsistency with the resurrection is 
beyond my conception. " Yes," says your lordship,* " it is inconsistent with it, for 
it makes the same body which was here united to the soul not to be necessary." 

3. I answer, therefore, thirdly, that this is the first time I ever learnt that 
" not necessary" was the same with " inconsistent. '"" I say, that a body made up 
of the same numerical parts of matter is not necessary to the making of the same 
person ; from whence it will indeed follow, that to the resurrection of the same 
l>-erson, the same numerical particles of matter are not required. What does your 
lordship infer from hence? to wit, this: therefore, lie who thinks that the same 
particles of matter are not necessary to the making of the same person, cannot 
believe that the same persons shall be raised with bodies made of the very same 
particles of matter, if God should reveal that it shall be so, viz. that the same 
persons shall be raised with the same bodies they had before. Which is all one 
as to say, that he who thought the blowing of rams' horns was not necessary in 
itself to the falling down of the walls of Jericho, could not believe that they 
should fall upon the blowing of rams' horns, when God had declared it should 
be so. 

Your lordship says, " my idea of personal identityis inconsistent with the article 
of the resurrection:" the reason you ground it on is this, because it makes not the 
same body necessary to the making the same person. Let us grant your lordship's 
consequence to be good, what will follow from it? No less than this, that your 
lordship's notion (for I dare not say your lordship has any so dangerous things as 
ideas) of personal identity, is inconsistent with the article of the resurrection. The 
demonstration of it is thus: your lordship says,f " It is not necessary that the 
body, to be raised at the last day, should consist of the same particles of matter 
which were united at the point of death, for there must be a great alteration in 
them in a lingering disease, as if a fat man falls into a consumption: you do not 
say the same particles which the sinner had at the very time of commission of his 
sins, for then a long sinner must have a vast body, considering the continual 
spending of particles by perspiration." And again, here your lordship says,:): 
' You allow the notion of personal identity to belong to the same man under 
several changes of matter. " From which words it is evident, that your lordship 
supposes a person in this world may be continued and preserved the same in a 
body not consisting of the same individual particles of matter ; and hence, it de- 
monstratively follows, that let your lordship's notion of personal identity be 
what it will, it makes " the same body not to be necessary to the same person;" 
and therefore it is by your lordship's rule inconsistent with the article of the 
resurrection. When your lordship shall think fit to clear your own noJon of 
personal identity from this inconsistency with the article of the resurrection, I 
do not doubt but my idea of personal identity will be thereby cleared too. Till 
then, all inconsistency with that article, which your lordship has here charged 
on mine, will unavoidably fall upon your lordship's too. 

But for the clearing of both, give me leave to say, my lord, that whatsoever is 
not necessary, does &st thereby become inconsistent. It is not necessary to the 
same person that his body should always consist of the same numerical particles; 
this is demonstration, because the particles of the bodies of the same persons in 
this life change every moment, and your lordship cannot deny it: and yet this 
makes it not inconsistent wilh God's preserving, if he thinks fit, to the same per- 
sons, bodies consisting of the same numerical particles always from the resur- 
rection to eternity. And so likewise though I say any thing that supposes it not 
necessary, that the same numerical particles which were vitally united to the soul 
in this life should be reunited to it at the resurrection, and constitute the body 
it shall then have; yet it is not inconsistent with this, that God may, if he pleases, 
give to every one a body consisting only of such particles as were before vitally 
united to his soul. And thus, I think, I have cleared my book from all that in- 

* 2d Answer. + Ibid. $ Ibid. 



Uh. 27. OF IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY. 233 

consistency which your lordship charges on it, and would persuade the world it 
has with the article of the resurrection of the dead. 

Only before I leave it, I will set down the remainder of what your lordship 
says upon this head, that though I see not the coherence nor tendency of it, nor 
the force of any argument in it against me; yet that nothing may be omitted that 
your lordship has thought fit to entertain your reader with on this new point, nor 
any one have reason to suspect, that I have passed by any word of your lordship's 
(on this now first introduced subject) wherein he might find your lordship had 
proved what you had promised in your title page. Your remaining words are 
these*: "The dispute is not how far personal identity in itself may consist in 
the very same material substance ; for we allow the notion of personal identity 
to belong to the same man under several changes of matter; but whether it doth 
not depend upon a vital union between the soul and body, and the life which is 
consequent upon it ; and therefore in the resurrection, the same material sub- 
stance must be reunited, or else it cannot be called a resurrection, but a reno- 
vation, i. e. it may be a new life, but not a raising the body from the dead." I 
confess, I do not see how what is here ushered in by the words " and there- 
fore," is a consequence from the preceding words: but as to the propriety of the 
name, I think it will not much be questioned, that if the same man rise who was 
dead, it may very properly be called the resurrection of the dead, which is the 
language of the Scripture. 

I must not part with this article of the resurrection without returning my 
thanks to your lordship for making met take notice of a fault in my essay. When 
I wrote that book, I took it for granted, as I doubt not but many others have done, 
that the Scripture had mentioned, in express terms, "the resurrection of the 
body." But upon the occasion your lordship has given me in your last letter, 
to look a little more narrowly into what revelation has declared concerning the 
resurrection, and finding no such express words in the Scripture as that "the 
body shall rise or be raised, or the resurrection of the body. " I shall in the 
next edition of it change these words of my book:):, "the dead bodies of men 
shall rise," into these of the Scriptures, "the dead shall rise." Not that I 
question that the dead shall be raised with bodies; but in matters of revelation, 
1 think it not only safest, but our duty, as far as any one delivers it for revela- 
tion, to keep close to the words of the Scripture, unless he will assume to him- 
self the authority of one inspired, or make himself wiser than the Holy Spirit 
himself. If I had spoke of the resurrection in precisely Scripture terms, I had 
avoided giving your lordship the occasion of making§ here such a verbal reflec- 
tion on my words; " what! not if there be an idea of identity as to the body?" 

* 2d Answer. f Ibid. | 1 Essay, B. 4. C. 18. sect. 7. § 2d Answer. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

OF OTHER RELATIONS. 

Sect. 1. Proportional. — Besides the before-mentioned occasions of 
time, place, and casuality of comparing, or referring things one to another, 
there are, as I have said, infinite others, some whereof I shall mention. 

First, The first I shall name, is some one simple idea; which being 
capable of parts or degrees, affords an occasion of comparing the subjects 
wherein it is to one another, in respect of that simple idea, v. g. whiter, 
sweeter, bigger, equal, more, &c. These relations depending on the equality 
and excess of the same simple idea, in several subjects, may be called, if 
one will, proportional : and that these are only conversant about those 
simple ideas received from sensation or reflection, is so evident, that nothing 
need be said to evince it. 

Sect. 2. Natural. — Secondly, Another occasion of comparing things 
2 E 



234 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

together, or considering one thing 1 , so as to include in that Consideration 
some other thing, is the circumstance of their origin or beginning ; which 
being not afterwards to be altered, make the relations depending thereon 
as lasting as the subjects to which they belong; v. g. father and son, 
brothers, cousin-germans, &c. which have their relations by one commu- 
nity of blood, wherein they partake in several degrees; countrymen, i. e 
those who were born in the same country, or tract of ground ; and these J 
call natural relations ; wherein we may observe, that, mankind have fitted 
their notions and words to the use of common life, and not to the truth 
and extent of things. For it is certain, that in reality the relation is the 
same betwixt the begetter and the begotten, in the several races of other 
animals as well as men: but yet it is seldom said, this bull is the grand- 
father of such a calf; or that two pigeons are cousin-germans. It is very 
convenient, that by distinct names these relations should be observed, and 
marked out in mankind ; there being occasion, both in laws, and other 
communications one with another, to mention and take notice of men un- 
der these relations : from whence also arise the obligations of several du- 
ties among men. Whereas in brutes, men having very little or so cause 
to mind these relations, they have not thought fit to give them distinct and 
peculiar names. This, by the way, may give us some light into the differ- 
ent state and growth of languages ; which, being suited only to the con- 
venience of communication, are proportioned to the notions men have, 
and the commerce of thoughts familiar among them ; and not to the reality 
or extent of things, nor to the various respects might be found among 
them, nor the different abstract considerations might be framed about them. 
Where they had no philosophical notions, there they had no terms to ex- 
press them : and it is no wonder men should have framed no names for 
those things they found no occasion to discourse of. From whence it is 
easy to imagine, why, as in some countries, they may not have so much 
as the name for a horse ; and in others, where they are more careful of the 
pedigrees of their horses than of their own, that there they may have not 
only names for particular horses, but also of their several relations of 
kindred one to another. 

Sect. 3. Instituted. — Thirdly, Sometimes the foundation of considering 
things, with reference to one another, is some act whereby any one comes 
by a moral right, power, or obligation to do something. Thus a general is 
one that hath power to command an army : and an army under a general 
is a collection of armed men obliged to obey one man. A citizen, or a 
burgher, is one who has a right to certain privileges in this or that place. 
All this sort, depending upon men's wills, or agreement in society, I call 
instituted, or voluntary ; and may be distinguished from the natural, in that 
they are most, if not all of them, some way or other alterable, and separa- 
ble from the persons to whom they have sometimes belonged, though 
neither of the substances, so related, be destroyed. Now, though these 
are all reciprocal, as well as the rest, and contain in them a reference ot 
two things one to the other ; yet, because one of the- two things often 
wants a relative name, importing that reference, men usually take no no • 
ice of it, and the relation is commonly overlooked : v. g. a patron and 
client are easily allowed to be relations, but a constable or dictator are not 
so readily, at first hearing, considered as such ; because there is no pecu- 
liar name for those who are under the command of a dictator, or constable, 
expressing a relation to either of them ; though it be certain, that either of 
them hath a certain power over some others ; and so is so far related to 
them, as well as a patron is to his client, or general to his army. 

Sect. 4. Moral. — Fourthly, There is another sort of relation, which is the 
conformity, or disagreement, men's voluntary actions have to a rule to which 
they are referred, and by which they are judged of; which, I think, may De 
called moral relation, as being that which denominates our moral actions, 
and deserves well to be examined ; there being no part of knowledge 



Ch. 28. OF MORAL RELATIONS. &tf 

wherein we should be more careful to get determined ideas, and avoid, as 
much as may be, obscurity and confusion. Human actions, when with 
their various ends, objects, manners, and circumstances, they are framed 
into distinct complex ideas, are, as has been shown, so many mixed modes, 
a great part whereof have names annexed to them. Thus, supposing 
gratitude to be a readiness to acknowledge and return kindness received ; 
polygamy to be the having more wives than one at once ; when we frame 
these notions thus in our minds, we have there so many determined ideas 
of mixed modes. But this is not all that concerns our actions ; it is not 
enough to have determined ideas of them, and to know what names be- 
long to such and such combinations of ideas. We have a farther and 
greater concernment, and that is, to know whether such actions, so made 
up, are morally good or bad. 

Sect. 5. Moral good and evil. — Good and evil, as hath been shown, 
B. II. Ch. 20, Sect. 2, and Ch. 21, Sect. 42, are nothing but pleasure or 
pain, or that which occasions or procures pleasure or pain to us. Moral 
good and evil then is only the conformity or disagreement of our volun- 
tary actions to some law, whereby good or evil is drawn on us by the will 
and power of the law-maker ; which good and evil, pleasure or pain, at- 
tending our observance, or breach of the law, by the decree of the law- 
maker, is that we call reward and punishment. 

Sect. 6. Moral rules. — Of these moral rules, or laws, to which men 
generally refer, and by which they judge of the rectitude or pravity of 
their actions, there seem to me to be three sorts, with their three different 
enforcements, or rewards and punishments. For since it would be utterly 
in vain to suppose a rule set to the free actions of man, without annexing 
to it some enforcement of good and evil to determine his will, we must, 
wherever we suppose a law, suppose also some reward or punishment an- 
nexed to that law. It would be in vain for one intelligent being to set a 
rule to the actions of another, if he had it not in his power to reward the 
compliance with, and punish deviation from his rule, by some good and 
evil, that is not the natural product and consequence of the action itself. 
For that being a natural convenience, or inconvenience, would operate of 
itself without a law. This, if I mistake not, is the true nature of all law, 
properly so called. 

Sect. 7. Laws. — The laws that men generally refer their actions to, to 
judge of their rectitude, or obliquity, seem to me to be these three. 1. The 
divine law. 2. The civil law. 3. The law of opinion or reputation, if I may 
so call it. By the relation they bear to the first of these, men judge whe- 
ther their actions are sins or duties ; by the second, whether they be crimi- 
nal or innocent ; and by the third, whether they be virtues or vices. 

Sect. 8. Divine law, the measure of sin and duty. — First, The divine 
law, whereby I mean that law which God has set to the actions of men, whe- 
ther promulgated to them by the light of nature, or the voice of revelation. 
That God has given a rule whereby men should govern themselves, I think 
there is nobody so brutish as to deny. He has a right to do it ; we are his 
creatures : he has goodness and wisdom to direct our actions to that which 
is best; and he has power to enforce it by rewards and punishments, of in- 
finite weight and duration, in another life ; for nobody can take us out of 
his hands. This is the only true touchstone of moral rectitude, and by 
comparing them to this law it is that men judge of the most considerable 
moral good or evil of their actions; that is, whether as duties or sins, they are 
like to procure them happiness or misery from the hand of the Almighty. 

Sect. 9. Civil law, the measure of crimes and innocence. — Secondly, 
the civil law, the rule set by the commonwealth to the actions of those 
who belong to it, is another rule, to which men refer their actions, to judge 
whether they be criminal or no. This law nobody overlooks ; the rewards 
and punishments that enforce it being ready at hand, and suitable to the 



236 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

power that makes it; which is the force of the commonwealth, engaged to 
protect the lives, liberties, and possessions of those who live according to 
its laws, and has power to take away life, liberty, or goods, from him who 
disoheys : which is the punishment of offences committed against this law. 

Sect. 10. Philosophical law, the measure of virtue and vice. — Thirdly, 
the law of opinion or reputation. Virtue and vice are names pretended and 
supposed every where to stand for actions in their own nature right and 
wrong; and as far as they really are so applied, they so far are coincident 
with the divine law above mentioned. But yet, whatever is pretended, this is 
visible, that these names, virtue and vice, in the particular instances of 
their application, through the several nations and societies of men in the 
world, are constantly attributed only to such actions, as in each country 
and society are in reputation or discredit. Nor is it to be thought strange, 
that men every where should give the name of virtue to those actions, 
which among them are judged praise-worthy ; and call that vice, which 
they account blameable ; since otherwise they would condemn themselves 
if they should think any thing right, to which they allowed not commen- 
dation : any thing wrong which they let pass without blame. Thus the 
measure of what is every where called and esteemed virtue and vice, is the 
approbation or dislike, praise or blame, which by a secret and tacit consent 
establishes itself in the several societies, tribes, and clubs of men in the 
world ; whereby several actions come to find credit or disgrace among 
them according to the judgment, maxims, or fashion of that place. For 
though men, uniting into politic societies, have resigned up to the public the 
disposing of all their force, so that they cannot employ it against any feL 
low-citizens any farther than the law of the country directs ; yet they retain 
still the power of thinking well or ill, approving or disapproving of the 
actions of those whom they live among, and converse with : and by this 
approbation and dislike, they establish among themselves what they will 
call virtue and vice. 

Sect. 11. — That this is the common measure of virtue and vice, will ap- 
pear to any one who considers, that though that passes for vice in one country 
which is counted a virtue, or at least not vice in another, yet, every where, 
virtue and praise, vice and blame, go together. Virtue is every where that 
which is thought praise-worthy ; and nothing else but that which has the 
allowance of public esteem, is called virtue (6). Virtue and praise are so 

(6) Our author, in his preface to the fourth edition, taking notice how apt men 
have been to mistake him, added what here follows : Of this the ingenious 
author of the discnurse concerning the nature of man has given me a late 
instance, to mention no other. For the civility of his expressions, and the can- 
dour that belongs to his order, forbid me to think that he would have closed his 
preface with an insinuation, as if in what I had said, book ii. chap. 28, concern- 
ing the third rule which men refer their actions to, I went about to make virtue 
vice, and vice virtue, unless he had mistaken my meaning ; which he could not 
have done, if he had but given himself the trouble to consider what the argu- 
ment was I was then upon, and what was the chief design of that chapter, 
plainly enough set down in the fourth section, and those following. For i 
was there not laying down moral rules, but showing the original and nature of 
moral ideas, and enumerating the rules men make use of in moral relations, 
whether those rules were true or false : and, pursuant thereunto, 1 tell what 
has every where that denomination, which in the language of that place answers 
to virtue and vice in ours; which alters not the nature of things, though men do 
generally judge of, and denominate their actions according to the esteem and 
fashion of the place or sect they are of. 

If he had been at the pains to reflect on what I had said, b. i. c. 3. sect. 18, and in 
this present chapter, sect. 13, 14, 15, and 20, he would have known what 1 think 
of the eternal and unalterable nature of right and wrong, and what I call virtue 



Ch. 28. OF OTHER RELATIONS. 237 

united, that they are often called by the same name. Sunt sua prcemia 
laudi, says Virgil ; and so Cicero, Nihil habet natura pruestantius, quam 
honestatem, quam laudem, quam dignitatem, quam decus; which, he tells 
us, are all names for the same thing, Tusc. lib. ii. This is the language of 

and vice: and if he had observed, that in the place he quotes, I only report as 
matter of fact what others call virtue and vice, he would not have found it 
liable to any great exception. For, I think, I am not much out in saying, that 
one of the rules made use of in the world, for a ground or measure of a moral 
relation, is that esteem and reputation which several sorts of actions find variously 
in the several societies of men, according to which they are there called virtues or 
vices: and whatever authority the learned Mr Lowde places in his old English 
Dictionary, I dare say it no where tells him (if I should appeal to it) that the 
same action is not in credit, called and counted a virtue in one place, which being 
in disrepute, passes for and under the name of vice in another. The taking 
notice that men bestow the names of virtue and vice according to this rule of 
reputation, is all I have done, or can be laid to my charge to have done, towards 
the making vice virtue, and virtue vice. But the good man does well, and as 
becomes his calling, to be watchful in such points, and to take the alarm, even 
at expressions, which standing alone by themselves might sound ill, and be 
suspected. 

It is to this zeal, allowable in his function, that I forgive his citing, as he does, 
these words of mine in sect. 11 of this chapter: " The exhortations of inspired 
teachers have not feared to appeal to common repute : ' whatsoever things are 
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be 
any praise,' &c. Phil. iv. 8." without taking notice of those immediately pre- 
ceding, which introduce them, and run thus: " whereby in the corruption of man- 
ners, the true boundaries of the law of nature, which ought to be the rule of virtue 
and vice, were pretty well preserved, so that even the exhortations of inspired 
teachers," &c. by which words, and the rest of that section, it is plain that I 
brought this passage of St Paul, not to prove that the general measure of what 
men call virtue and vice, throughout the world, was the reputation and fashion 
of each particular society within itself 5 but to show, that though it were so, yet, 
for reasons I there give men, in that way of denominating their actions, did not 
for the most part, much vary from the law of nature; which is that standing and 
unalterable rule by which they ought to judge of the moral rectitude and pravity 
of their actions, and accordingly denominate them virtues or vices. Had Mr 
Lowde considered this, he would have found it little to his purpose to have 
quoted that passage in a sense I used it not; and would, I imagine, have spared 
the explication he subjoins to it as not very necessary. But I hope this second 
edition will give him satisfaction in the point, and that this matter is now so 
expressed as to show him there was no cause of scruple. 

Though I am forced to differ from him in those apprehensions he has expressed 
in the latter end of his preface, concerning what I had said about virtue and vice, 
yet we are better agreed than he thinks, in what he says in his third chapter, p. 
78, concerning natural inscription and innate notions. I shall not deny him the 
privilege he claims, p. 52, to state the question as he pleases, especially when In- 
states it so, as to leave nothing in it contrary to what I have said; for, according 
to him, innate notions being conditional things, depending upon the concurrence 
of several other circumstances, in order to the soul's exerting them; all that he 
says for innate, imprinted, impressed notions (for of innate ideas he says nothing 
at all) amounts at last only to this: that there are certain propositions, which 
though the soul from the beginning, or when a man is born, does not know, yet 
by assistance from the outward senses, and the help of some previous cultivation, 
it may afterwards come certainly to know the truth of; which is no more than 
what I have affirmed in my first book. For I suppose, by the soul's exerting 
them, he means its beginning to know them, or else the soul's exerting of notions 
will be to me a very unintelligible expression; and I think at best is a very unfit 
one in this case, it misleading men's thoughts by an insinuation, as if these no- 
tions we-» in the mind before the soul exerts them; i. e. before they are knovn; 



238 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

the heathen philosophers, who well understood wherein their notions of 
virtue and vice consisted, and though perhaps by the different temper, edu- 
cation, fashion, maxims, or interests of different sorts of men, it fell out 
that what was thought praise-worthy in one place, escaped not censure in 
another; and so in different societies, virtues and vices were changed; yet, as 
to the main, they for the most part kept the same every where. For since 
nothing can be more natural than to encourage with esteem and reputation 
that wherein every one finds his advantage, and to blame and discountenance 
the contrary ; it is no wonder that esteem and discredit, virtue and vice, 
should in a great measure every where correspond with the unchangeable 
rule of right and wrong, which the law of God hath established : there 
being nothing that so directly and visibly secures and advances the general 
good of mankind in this world, as obedience to the laws he has set them; 
and nothing that breeds such mischiefs and confusion, as the neglect of 
them. And, therefore, men, without renouncing all sense and reason, and 
their own interest, which they are so constantly true to, could not generally 
mistake in placing their commendation and blame on that side that really 
deserved it not. Nay, even those men whose practice was otherwise, 
failed not to give their approbation right ; few being depraved to that de- 
gree, as not to condemn, at least in others, the faults they themselves were 
guilty of: whereby, even in the corruption of manners, the true bounda- 
ries of the law of nature, which ought to be the rule of virtue and vice, 
were pretty well preferred. So that even the exhortations of inspired 
teachers have not feared to appeal to common repute : " Whatsoever is 
lovely, whatsoever is of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any 
praise," &c Phil. iv. 8. 

Sect. 12. Its enforcements, commendation, and discredit. — If any one 
shall imagine that I have forgot my own notion of a law, when I make the 
law whereby men judge of virtue and vice, to be nothing else but the consent 
of private men, who have not authority enough to make a law; especially 
wanting that which is so necessary and essential to a law, a power to enforce 
it: I think I may say, that he who imagines commendation and disgrace not to 
be strong motives to men, to accommodate themselves to the opinions and 
rules of those with whom they converse, seems little skilled in the nature 
or history of mankind : the greatest part whereof he shall find to govern 
themselves chiefly, if not solely, by this law of fashion ; and so they do 
that which keeps them in reputation with their company, little regard the 
laws of God, or the magistrate. The penalties that attend the breach of 
God's laws, some, nay perhaps most men, seldom seriously reflect on ; 

whereas truly before they are known, there is nothing of them in the mind but 
a capacity to know them, when the concurrence of those circumstances, which 
this ingenious author thinks necessary, in order to the soul's exerting them, 
brings them into our knowledge. 

P. 52, I find him express it thus: "these natural notions are not so imprinted 
upon the soul, as that they naturally and necessarily exert themselves (even in 
children and idiots) without any assistance from the outward senses, or without 
the help of some previous cultivation." Here, he says, they exert themselves, 
as p. 78, that the soul exerts them. When he has explained to himself or others 
what he means by the soul's exerting innate notions, or their exerting themselves, 
and what that previous cultivation and circumstances, in order to their being ex- 
erted, are; he will, I suppose, find there is so little of controversy between him 
and me in the point, bating that he calls that exerting of notions which I in a 
more vulgar style call knowing, that I have reason to think he brought in my 
name upon this occasion only out of the pleasure he has to speak civilly of me, 
which I must gratefully acknowledge he has done wherever he mentions me, 
not without conferring on me, as some others have done, a title I have no 
rirht to. 



Ch. 28. OF OTHER RELATIONS. 239 

and among 1 those that do, many, whilst they break that law, entertain 
( thoughts of future reconciliation, and making their peace for such breaches. 
And as to the punishments due from the laws of the commonwealth, they 
frequently flatter themselves with the hopes of impunity. But no man 
escapes the punishment of their censure and dislike, who offends against 
the fashion and opinion of the company he keeps, and would recommend 
himself to. Nor is there one often thousand, who is stiff and insensible 
enough to bear up under the constant dislike and condemnation of his own 
club. He must be of a strange and unusual constitution, who can con- 
tent himself to live in constant disgrace and disrepute with his own par- 
ticular society. Solitude many men have sought, and been reconciled to : 
but nobody, that has the least thought or sense of a man about him, can 
live in society under the constant dislike and ill opinion of his familiars, 
and those he converses with. This is a burden too heavy for human suf- 
ferance ; and he must be made of irreconcilable contradictions, who can 
take pleasure in company, and yet be insensible of contempt and disgrace 
from his companions. 

Sect. 13. These three laws, the rules of moral good and evil. — These 
three then, First, The law of God; Secondly, The law of politic societies ; 
Thirdly, The law of fashion, or private censure, are those to which men 
variously compare their actions ; and it is by their conformity to one of 
these laws that they take their measures, when they would judge of their 
moral rectitude, and denominate their actions good or bad. 

Sect. 14. Morality is the relation of actions to these rules. — Whether 
the rule, to which, as to a touchstone, we bring our voluntary actions, to 
examine them by, and try their goodness, and accordingly to name them ; 
which is, as it were, the mark of the value we set upon them : whether, I 
say, we take that rule from the fashion of the country, or the will of a law- 
maker, the mind is easily able to observe the relation any action hath to 
it, and to judge whether the action agrees or disagrees with the rule ; and 
so hath a notion of moral goodness or evil, which is either conformity or 
not conformity of any action to that rule : and therefore is often called 
moral rectitude. This rule being nothing but a collection of several sim- 
ple ideas, the conformity thereto is but so ordering the action, that the 
simple ideas belonging to it may correspond to those which the law re- 
quires. And thus we see how moral beings and notions are founded on, 
and terminated in, these simple ideas we have received from sensation or 
reflection. For example, let us consider the complex idea we signify by 
the word murder ; and when we have taken it asunder, and examined all 
the particulars, we shall find them to amount to a collection of simple ideas 
derived from reflection or sensation, viz. First, from reflection on the ope- 
rations of our own minds, we have the ideas of willing, considering, pur- 
posing before hand, malice, or wishing ill to another ; and also of life, or 
perception, and self-motion. Secondly, from sensation we have the col- 
lection of those simple sensible ideas which are to be found in a man, and 
of some action, whereby we put an end to perception and motion in a 
man ; all which simple ideas are comprehended in the word murder. This 
collection of simple ideas being found by me to agree or disagree with the 
esteem of the country I have been bred in, and to be held by most men 
there worthy praise or blame, I call the action virtuous or vicious : if I 
have the will of a supreme invisible Law-maker for my rule ; then, as I sup- 
pose the action commanded or forbidden by God, I call it good or evil, sin 
or duty ; and if I compare it to the civil law, the rule made by the legis- 
lative power of the country, I call it lawful or unlawful, a crime or no 
crime. So that whencesoever we take the rule of moral actions, or by 
what standard soever we frame in our minds the ideas of virtues or vices, 
they consist only and are made up of collections of simple ideas, which we 
originally received from sense or reflection, and their rectitude or obliquity 



240 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

consists in the agreement or disagreement with those patterns prescribed 
by some law. 

Sect. 15. To conceive rightly of moral actions, we must take notice 
of them under this twofold consideration. First, as they are in themselves 
each made up of such a collection of simple ideas. Thus drunkenness, 
or lying, signify such or such a collection of simple ideas, which I call 
mixed modes : and in this sense they are as much positive absolute ideas 
as the drinking of a horse, or speaking of a parrot. Secondly, our actions 
are considered as good, bad, or indifferent ; and in this respect they are 
relative, it being their conformity to, or disagreement with, some rule that 
makes them to be regular or irregular, good or bad, and so as far as they 
are compared with a rule, and thereupon denominated, they come under 
relation. Thus, the challenging and fighting with a man, as it is a certain 
positive mode, or particular sort of action, by particular ideas, distinguish- 
ed from all others, is called duelling, which when considered in relation 
to the law of God, will deserve the name sin ; to the law of fashion, in 
some countries, valour and virtue ; and to the municipal laws of some go- 
vernments, a capital crime. In this case, when the positive mode has one 
name, and another name as it stands in relation to the law, the distinction 
may as easily be observed as it is in substances, where one name, v. g. 
man, is used to signify the thing; another, v. g. father, to signify the 
relation. 

Sect. 16. The denominations of actions often mislead us. — But because 
very frequently the positive idea of the action, and its moral relation, are 
comprehended together under one name, and the same word made use of 
to express both the mode or action, and its moral rectitude or obliquity ; 
therefore the relation itself is less taken notice of, and there is often no 
distinction made between the positive idea of the action, and the reference 
it has to a rule. By which confusion of these two distinct considerations 
under one term, those who yield too easily to the impressions of sounds, 
and are forward to take names for things, are often misled in their judg- 
ment of actions. Thus the taking from another what is his, without his 
knowledge or allowance, is properly called stealing; but that name being 
commonly understood to signify also the moral pravity of the action, and 
to denote its contrariety to the law, men are apt to condemn whatever 
they hear called stealing as an ill action, disagreeing with the rule of right. 
And yet the private taking away his sword from a madman, to prevent his 
doing mischief, though it be properly denominated stealing, as the name 
of such a mixed mode ; yet when compared to the law of God, and con- 
sidered in its relation to that supreme rule, it is no sin or transgression, 
though the name stealing ordinarily carries such an intimation with it. 

Sect. 17. Relations innumerable. — And thus much for the relation of 
human actions to a law, which therefore I call moral relation. 

It would make a volume to go over all sorts of relations ; it is not there- 
fore to be expected that I should here mention them all. It suffices to our 
present purpose to show by these what the ideas are we have of this com- 
prehensive consideration, called relation : which is so various, and the oc- 
casions of it so many (as many as there can be of comparing things one to 
another,) that it is not very easy to reduce it to rules, or under just heads. 
Those I have mentioned, I think, are some of the most considerable, and 
such as may serve to let us see from whence we get our ideas of re- 
lations, and wherein they are founded. But before I quit this argument, 
from what has been said, give me leave to observe, 

Sect. 18. All relations terminate in simple ideas. — First, that it is 
evident that all relation terminates in, and is ultimately founded on, those 
simple ideas we have got from sensation or reflection : so that all that we 
have in our thoughts ourselves (if we think of any thing, or have any 
meaning) or would signify to others, when we use words standing for re- 



Ch. 28. OF OTHER RELATIONS. 241 

lations, is nothing but some simple ideas, or collections of simple ideas, 
compared one with another. This is so manifest in that sort called pro- 
portional, that nothing- can be more : for when a man says honey is 
sweeter than wax, it is plain that his thoughts, in this relation, terminate 
in this simple idea, sweetness, which is equally true of all the rest; though, 
where they are compounded or decompounded, the simple ideas they are 
made up of are, perhaps, seldom taken notice of. V. g. when the word 
father is mentioned: First, there is meant that particular species, or col- 
lective idea, signified by the word rnaii. Secondly, those sensible simple 
ideas, signified by the word generation ; and, thirdly, the effects of it, and 
all the simple ideas signified by the word child. So the word friend being 
taken for a man who loves, and is ready to do good to another, has all 
these following ideas to the making of it up; first, all the simple ideas, 
comprehended in the word man, or intelligent being. Secondly, the idea 
of love. Thirdly, the idea of readiness or disposition. Fourthly, the idea 
of action, which is any kind of thought or motion. Fifthly, the idea of 
good, which signifies any thing that may advance his happiness, and ter- 
minates at last, if examined, in particular simple ideas, of which the word 
good in general signifies any one; but, if removed from all simple ideas 
quite, it signifies nothing at all. And thus also all moral words termi- 
nate at last, though perhaps more remotely, in a collection of simple ideas : 
the immediate signification of relative words being very often other sup- 
posed known relations, which, if traced one to another, still end in simple 
ideas. 

Sect. 19. We have ordinarily as clear (or clearer) a notion of the 
relation, as of its foundation. — Secondly, that in relations we have for the 
most part, if not always, as clear a notion of the relation, as we have of 
those simple ideas wherein it is founded. Agreement or disagreement, 
whereon relation depends, being things whereof we have commonly as 
clear ideas as of any other whatsoever ; it being but the distinguishing 
simple ideas, or their degrees one from another, without which we could 
have no distinct knowledge at all. For if I have a clear idea of sweetness, 
light, or extension, I have too of equal, or more or less, of each of these: 
if I know what it is for one man to be born of a woman, viz. Sempronia, 
I know what it is for another man to be born of the same woman, Sem- 
pronia; and so have as clear a notion of brothers as of births, and perhaps 
clearer. For if I believed that Sempronia dug Titus out of the parsley- 
bed (as they used to tell children), and thereby became his mother; and 
that afterward, in the same manner, she dug Caius out of the parsley-bed ; 
I had as clear a notion of the relation of brothers between them, as if I 
had all the skill of a midwife : the notion that the same woman contri- 
buted, as mother, equally to their births, (though I were ignorant or mis- 
taken in the manner of it,) being that on which I grounded the relation, 
and that they agreed in that circumstance of birth, let it be what it will. 
The comparing them then, in their descent from the same person, without 
knowing the particular circumstances of that descent, is enough to found 
my notion of their having or not having the relation of brothers. But 
though the ideas of particular relations are capable of being as clear and 
distinct in the minds of those who will duly consider them as those of 
mixed modes, and more determinate than those of substances ; yet the 
names belonging to relation are often of as doubtful and uncertain signifi- 
cation as those of substances or mixed modes, and much more than those 
of simple ideas ; because relative words being the marks of this compari- 
son, which is made only by men's thoughts, and is an idea only in men's 
minds, men frequently apply them to different comparisons of things, ac- 
cording to their own imaginations, which do not always correspond with 
those of others using the same name. 

Sect. 20. The notion of the relation is the same, whether the rule and 
2 F 



242 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

action to be compared is true or false. — Thirdly, that in these I call mora* 
relations I have a true notion of relation, by comparing the action with 
the rule, whether the rule be true or false. For if I measure any thing by 
a yard, I know whether the thing I measure be longer or shorter than that 
supposed yard, though perhaps the yard I measure by be not exactly the 
standard, which indeed is another inquiry : for though the rule be errone- 
ous, and I mistaken in it, yet the agreement or disagreement observable in 
that which I compare with makes me perceive the relation. Though 
measuring by a wrong rule, I shall thereby be brought to judge amiss of its 
moral rectitude, because I have tried it by that which is not the true rule, 
yet I am not mistaken in the relation which that action bears to that rule 
I compare it to, which is agreement or disagreement. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

OF CLEAR AND OBSCURE, DISTINCT AND CONFUSED IDEAS. 

Sect. 1. Ideas, some clear and distinct, others obscure and confused. — 
Having shown the original of our ideas, and taken a view of their several 
sorts, considered the difference between the simple and the complex, and 
observed how the complex ones are divided into those of modes, substances, 
and relations ; all which, I think, is necessary to be done by any one who 
would acquaint himself thoroughly with the progress of the mind in its 
apprehension and knowledge of things ; it will, perhaps, be thought I have 
dwelt long enough upon the examination of ideas. I must, nevertheless, 
crave leave to offer some few other considerations concerning them. The 
rirst is, that some are clear, and others obscure ; some distinct, and others 
confused. 

Sect. 2. Clear and obscure explained by sight. — The perception of 
the mind being most aptly explained by words relating to the sight, we 
shall best understand what is meant by clear and obscure in our ideas by 
reflecting on what we call clear and obscure in the objects of sight. Light 
being that which discovers to us visible objects, we give the name of 
obscure to that which is not placed in a light sufficient to discover minute- 
ly to us the figure and colours which are observable in it, and which, in a 
better light, would be discernible. In like manner our simple ideas are 
clear when they are such as the objects themselves, from whence they 
were taken, did or might, in a well-ordered sensation or perception, present 
them. Whilst the memory retains them thus, and can produce them to 
the mind, whenever it has occasion to consider them, they are clear ideas. 
So far as they either want any thing of the original exactness, or have lost 
any of their first freshness, and are, as it were, faded or tarnished by time, 
so far are they obscure. Complex ideas, as they are made up of simple 
ones, so they are clear when the ideas that go to their composition are 
clear ; and the number and order of those simple ideas, that are the in- 
gredients of any complex one, is determinate and certain. 

Sect. 3. Causes of obscurity. — The causes of obscurity in simple ideas 
seem to be either dull organs, or very slight and transient impressions 
made by the objects, or else a weakness in the memory not able to retain 
them as received. For to return again to visible objects, to help us to ap- 
prehend this matter : if the organs or faculties of perception, like wax 
over-hardened with cold, will not receive the impression of the seal, from 
the usual impulse wont to imprint it ; or, like wax, of a temper too soft, 
will not hold it well when well imprinted; or else supposing the wax of a 
temper fit, but the seal not applied with a sufficient force to make a clear 



Ch. 29. OF CLEAR AND OBSCURE IDEAS. 243 

impression : in any of these cases, the print left by the seal will be ob- 
scure. This, I suppose, needs no application to make it plainer. 

Sect. 4. Distinct and confused, what. — As a clear idea is that where- 
of the mind has such a full and evident perception, as it does receive from 
an outward object operating duly on a well-disposed organ ; so a distinct 
idea is that wherein the mind perceives a difference from all other ; and a 
confused idea is such a one as is not sufficiently distinguishable from ano- 
ther, from which it ought to be different. 

Sect. 5. Objection. — If no idea be confused but such as is not sufficient- 
ly distinguishable from another, from which it should be different, it will 
be hard, may any one say, to find any where a confused idea. For let any 
idea be as it will, it can be no other but such as the mind perceives it to 
be ; and that very perception sufficiently distinguishes it from all other 
ideas, which cannot be other, i. e. different, without being perceived to be 
so. No idea therefore can be undistinguishable from another, from which 
it ought to be different, unless you would have it different from itself: for 
from all other it is evidently different. 

Sect. 6. Confusion of ideas is in reference to their names. — To remove 
this difficulty, and to help us to conceive aright what it is that makes the 
confusion ideas are at any time chargeable with, we must consider, that 
things ranked under distinct names are supposed different enough to be 
distinguished, that so each sort by its peculiar name may be marked, and 
discoursed of apart upon any occasion: and there is nothing more evident 
than that the greatest part of different names are supposed to stand foi 
different things. Now every idea a man has being visibly what it is, and 
distinct from all other ideas but itself, that which makes it confused is, 
when it is such, that it may as well be called by another name as that 
which it is expressed by : the difference which keeps the things (to be 
ranked under those two different names) distinct, and makes some of their, 
belong rather to the one, and some of them to the other of those names, 
being left out ; and so the distinction, which was intended to be kept up 
by those different names is quite lost. 

Sect. 7. Defaults which make confusion. — The defaults which usually 
occasion this confusion, I think, are chiefly these following: 

First, complex ideas made up of too few simple ones. — First, when any 
complex idea (for it is complex ideas that are most liable to confusion) is 
made up of too small a number of simple ideas, and such only as are com- 
mon to other things, whereby the differences that make it deserve a diffe- 
rent name are left out. Thus, he that has an idea made up of barely the 
simple ones of a beast with spots, has but a confused idea of a leopard, it 
not being thereby sufficiently distinguished from a lynx, and several other 
sorts of beasts that are spotted. So that, such an idea, though it hath the 
peculiar name leopard, is not distinguishable from those designed by the 
names lynx, or panther, and may as well come under the name lynx as 
leopard. How much the custom of defining of words by general terms 
contributes to make the ideas we would express by them confused and 
undetermined, I leave others to consider. This is evident, that confused 
ideas are such as render the use of words uncertain, and take away the 
benefit of distinct names. When the ideas, for which we use different 
terms, have not a difference answerable to their distinct names, and so 
cannot be distinguished by them, there it is that they are truly confused. 

Sect. 8. Secondly, or its simple ones jumbled disorderly together. — 
Secondly, another fault which makes our ideas confused is when, though 
the particulars that make up any idea are in number enough, yet they are so 
jumbled together, that it is not easily discernible whether it more belongs 
to the name that is given it than to any other. There is nothing more 
proper to make us conceive this confusion, than a sort of pictures usually 
shv>wn as surprising pieces of art, wherein the colours, as they are laid by 



244 OF EIUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

the pencil on the table itself, mark out very odd and unusual figures, and 
have no discernible order in their position. This draught, thus made up 
of parts wherein no symmetry nor order appears, is in itself no more a con- 
tused thing than the picture of a cloudy sky; wherein, though there be as 
little order of colours or figures to be found, yet nobody thinks it a con- 
fused picture. What is it then that makes it be thought confused, since 
the want of symmetry does not] as it is plain it does not, for another 
draught made, barely in imitation of this, could not be called confused. I 
answer, that which makes it be thought confused is the applying it to 
some name to which it does no more discernibly belong than to some 
other: v. g. when it is said to be the picture of a man, or Caesar, then any 
one with reason counts it confused: because it is not discernible in that 
state to belong more to the name man, or Caesar, than to the name baboon, 
orPompey; which are supposed to stand for different ideas from those 
signified by man or Caesar. But when a cylindrical mirror, placed right, 
hath reduced those irregular lines on the table into their due order and 
proportion, then the confusion ceases, and the eye presently sees that it 
is a man, or Caesar, i. e. that it belongs to those names, and that it is suf- 
ficiently distinguishable from a baboon, or Pompey, i. e. from the ideas 
signified by those names. Just thus it is with our ideas, which are as it 
were the pictures of things. No one of these mental draughts, however 
the parts are put together, can be called confused (for they are plainly 
discernible as they are,) till it be ranked under some ordinary name, to 
which it cannot be discerned to belong, any more than it does to some 
other name of an allowed different signification. 

Sect. 9. Thirdly, or are mutable and undetermined. — Thirdly, a 
third defect that frequently gives the name of confused to our ideas, is 
when any one of them is uncertain and undetermined. Thus we may ob- 
serve men, who, not forbearing to use the ordinary words of their lan- 
guage till they have learned their precise signification, change the idea 
they make this or that term stand for, almost as often as they use it. He 
that does this, out of uncertainty of what he should leave out, or put into 
his idea of church or idolatry, every time he thinks of either, and holds 
not steady to any one precise combination of ideas that makes it up, is 
said to have a confused idea of idolatry, or the church; though this be 
still for the same reason as the former, viz. because a mutable idea, (if we 
will allow it to be one idea,) cannot belong to one name rather than ano- 
ther ; and so loses the distinction that distinct names are designed for. 

Sect. 10. Confusion, without reference to names, hardly conceivable. — 
By what has been said, we may observe how much names, as supposed 
.steady signs of things, and by their difference to stand for and keep things 
distinct that in themselves are different, are the occasion of denominating 
ideas distinct or confused, by a secret and unobserved reference the mind 
makes of its ideas to such names. This perhaps will be fuller understood 
after what I say of words, in the third book, has been read and considered. 
But without taking notice of such a reference of ideas to distinct names, 
as the signs of distinct things, it will be hard to say what a confused idea 
is. And therefore when a man designs, by any name, a sort of things, or 
any one particular thing, distinct from all others ; the complex idea he an- 
nexes to that name is the more distinct, the more particular the ideas are, 
and the greater and more determinate the number and order of them are, 
whereof it is made up. For the more it has of these, the more it has still 
of the perceivable differences, whereby it is kept separate and distinct from 
all ideas belonging to other names, even those that approach nearest to 
it ; and thereby all confusion with them is avoided. 

Sect. 11. Confusion concerns always two ideas. — Confusion, making 
it a difficulty to separate two things that should be separated, concerns 
always t\ro ideas ; and those most which most approach one another. 



Ch. 29. OF CLEAR AND OESCURE IDEAS. 245 

Whenever therefore we suspect any idea to be confused, we must examine 
what other it is in danger to be confounded with, or which it cannot easily 
be separated from ; and that will always be found an idea belonging to 
another name, and so should be a different thing, from which yet it is 
not sufficiently distinct ; being either the same with it, or making a part 
of it, or at least, as properly called by that name as the other it is ranked 
under ; and so keeps not that difference from that other idea, which the 
different names import. 

Sect. 12. Causes of confusion. — This, I think, is the confusion pro- 
per to ideas, which still carries with it a secret reference to names. At 
least, if there be any other confusion of ideas, this is that which most of 
all disorders men's thoughts and discourses : ideas, as ranked under names, 
being those that for the most part men reason of within themselves, and 
always those which they commune about with others. And therefore 
where there are supposed two different ideas marked by two different 
names, which are not as distinguishable as the sounds that stand for them, 
there never fails to be confusion ; and where any ideas are distinct, as the 
ideas of those two sounds they are marked by, there can be between them 
no confusion. — The way to prevent it is to collect and unite into one com- 
plex idea, as precisely as is possible, all those ingredients whereby it is 
differenced from others ; and to them, so united in a determinate number 
and order, apply steadily the same name. But this neither accommodating 
men's ease or vanity, or serving any design but that of naked truth, which 
is not always the thing aimed at, such exactness is rather to be wished 
than hoped for. And since the loose application of names to undetermin- 
ed, variable, and almost no ideas, serves both to cover our own ignorance, 
as well as to perplex and confound others, which goes for learning and 
superiority in knowledge, it is no wonder that most men should use it 
themselves, whilst they complain of it in others. Though, I think, no 
small part of the confusion to be found in the notions of men might by 
care and ingenuity be avoided, yet I am far from concluding it every where 
wilful. Some ideas are so complex, and made up of so many parts, that 
the memory does not easily retain the very same precise combination of 
simple ideas under one name ; much less are we able constantly to divine 
for what precise complex idea such a name stands in another man's use of 
it. From the first of these, follows confusion in a man's own reasonings 
and opinions within himself; from the latter, frequent confusion in dis • 
coursing and arguing with others. But having more at large treated of 
words, their defects and abuses, in the following book, I shall here say nc 
more of it. 

Sect. 13. Complex ideas may be distinct in one part, and confused in 
another. — Our complex ideas being made up of collections, and so variety 
of simple ones, may accordingly be very clear and distinct in one part, 
and very obscure and confused in another. In a man who speaks of a chi- 
lisedron, or a body of a thousand sides, the ideas of the figure may be very 
confused, though that of the number be very distinct; so that he being able 
to discourse and demonstrate concerning that part of his complex idea 
which depends upon the number of a thousand, he is apt to think he has a 
distinct idea of a chilisedron ; though it be plain he has no precise idea of 
its figure, so as to distinguish it by that, from one that has but 999 sides ; 
the not observing whereof causes no small error in men's thoughts, and 
confusion in their discourses. 

Sect. 14. This, if not heeded, causes confusion in our arguings. — 
He that thinks he has a distinct idea of the figure of a chilisedron, let him 
for trial sake take another parcel of the same uniform matter, viz. gold or 
wax, of an equal bulk, and make it into a figure of 999 sides : he will, I 
doubt not, be able to distinguish these two ideas one from another by the 
number of sides, and reason and argue distinctly about them, whilst he 



246 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

keeps his thoughts and reasoning- to that part only of these ideas which is 
contained in their numbers ; as that the sides of the one could be divided 
into two equal numbers, and of the others not, &c. But when he goes 
about to distinguish them by their figure, he will there be presently at a loss, 
and not be able, I think, to frame in his mind two ideas, one of them 
distinct from the other, by the bare figure of these two pieces of gold, as 
he could, if the same parcels of gold were made one into a cube, the other 
a figure of five sides. In which incomplete ideas we are very apt to 
impose on ourselves, and wrangle with others, especially where they have 
particular and familiar names. For being satisfied m that part of the idea, 
which we have clear, — and the name which is familiar to us being applied 
to the whole, containing that part also which is imperfect and obscure, — 
we are apt to use it for that confused part, and draw deductions from it, 
in the obscure part of its signification, as confidently as we do from the 
other. 

Sect. 15. Instance in eternity. — Having frequently in our mouths the 
name eternity, we are apt to think we have a positive comprehensive 
idea of it, which is as much as to say that there is no part of that duration 
which is not clearly contained in our idea. It is true, that he who thinks 
so may have a clear idea of duration ; he may also have a very clear idea 
of a very great length of duration ; he may also have a clear idea of the 
comparison of that great one with still a greater : but it not being possible 
for him to include in his idea of any duration, let it be as great as it will, 
the whole extent together of a duration, where he supposes no end, that 
part of his idea, which is still beyond the bounds of that large duration he 
represents to his own thoughts, is very obscure and undetermined. And 
hence it is, that in disputes and reasonings concerning eternity, or any 
other infinity, we are apt to blunder, and involve ourselves in manifest 
absurdities. 

Sect. 16. Divisibility of matter. — In matter we have no clear ideas of 
the smallness of parts much beyond the smallest that occur to any of our 
senses ; and therefore when we talk of the divisibility of matter in infinitum, 
though we have clear ideas of division and divisibility, and have also 
clear ideas of parts made out of a whole by division, yet we have but very 
obscure and confused ideas of corpuscles, or minute bodies so to be divided, 
when by former divisions they are reduced to a smallness much exceeding 
the perception of any of oursenses; and so all that we have clear and distinct 
ideas of, is of what division in general or abstractedly is, and the relation 
of totum and parts ; but of the bulk of the body to be thus infinitely divided 
after certain progressions, I think we have no clear nor distinct idea at 
all. For I ask any one, whether taking the smallest atom of dust he ever 
saw, he has any distinct idea (bating still the number, which concerns not 
extension) betwixt the 100,000th, and the 1,000,000th part of it. Or if he 
thinks he can refine his ideas to that degree, without losing sight of them, 
let him add ten cyphers to each of those numbers. Such a degree of small- 
ness is not unreasonable to be supposed, since a division carried on so far 
brings it no nearer the end of infinite division than the first division into 
two halves does. I must confess, for my part, I have no clear distinct ideas 
of the different bulk or extension of those bodies, having but a very obscure 
one of either of them. So that, I think, when we talk of the division of 
bodies in infinitum, our idea of their distinct bulks, which is the subject 
and foundation of division, comes, after a little progression, to be con- 
founded and almost lost in obscurity. For that idea which is to represent 
only bigness, must be very obscure and confused, which we cannot distin- 
guish from one ten times as big, but only by number; so that we have clear, dis- 
tinct ideas, we may say, often and one, but no distinct ideas of two such ex- 
tensions. It is plain from hence, that when we talk of infinite divisibility of 
body, or extension, our distinct and clear ideas are only of numbers ; 



Ch. 29. OF CLEAR AND OBSCURE IDEAS. 247 

but the clear distinct ideas of extension, after some progress of division, 
are quite lost : and of such minute parts we have no distinct ideas at ail ; 
but it returns, as all our ideas of infinite do, at last to that of number 
always to be added, but thereby never amounts to any distinct idea of ac- 
tual infinite parts. We have, it is true, a clear idea of division, as often 
as we think of it ; but thereby we have no more a clear idea of infinite parts 
in matter, than we have a clear idea of an infinite number, by being able 
still to add new numbers to any assigned numbers we have ; endless divisi- 
bility giving- us no more a clear and distinct idea of actually infinite parts, 
than endless addibility (if I may so speak) gives us a clear and distinct 
idea of an actually infinite number, they both being only in a power still of 
increasing the number, be it already as great as it will. So that of what 
remains to be added (wherein consists the infinity,) we have but an obscure, 
imperfect, and confused idea; from or about which we can argue or reason 
with no certainty or clearness, no more than we can in arithmetic about 
a number of which we have no such distinct idea, as we have of four or 
one hundred ; but only this relative obscure one, that compared to any 
other, it is still bigger ; and we have no more a clear positive idea of it 
when we say or conceive it is bigger, or more than 400,000,000, than if we 
should say it is bigger than forty or four; 400,000,000 having no nearer a 
proportion to the end of addition or number than four. For he that adds 
only four to four, and so proceeds, shall as soon come to the end of all 
addition, as he that adds 400,000,000 to 400,000,000. And so likewise in 
eternity, he that has an idea of but four years has as much a positive com- 
plete idea of eternity as he that has one of 400,000,000 of years: for what 
remains of eternity beyond either of these two numbers of years is as clear 
to the one as the other, i. e. neither of them has any clear positive idea of 
it at all. For he that adds only four years to four, and so on, shall as soon 
reach eternity as he that adds 400,000,000 of years, and so on ; or, if he 
please, doubles the increase as often as he will ; the remaining abyss being 
still as far beyond the end of all these progressions as it is from the length 
of a day or an hour. For nothing finite bears any proportion to infinite ; 
and therefore our ideas, which are all finite, cannot bear any. Thus it is 
also in our ideas of extension, when we increase it by addition, as well as 
when we diminish it by division, and would enlarge our thoughts to infinite 
space. After a few doublings of those ideas of extension, which are the 
largest we are accustomed to have, we lose the clear distinct idea of that 
space ; it becomes a confusedly great one, with a surplus of still greater ; 
about which, when we would argue or reason, we shall always find our- 
selves at a loss ; confused ideas in our arguings and deductions from that 
part of them which is confused always leading us into confusion. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

OF REAL AND FANTASTICAL IDEAS. 

Sect. 1. Real ideas are conformable to their archetypes. — Besides 
what we have already mentioned concerning ideas, other considerations 
belong to them, in reference to things from whence they are taken, or 
which they may be supposed to represent : and thus, I think, they may 
come under a threefold distinction ; and are, 

First, either real or fantastical. 

Secondly, adequate or inadequate. 

Thirdly, true or false. 

First, by real ideas, I mean such as have a foundation in nature ; such as 



248 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

have a conformity with the real being and existence of things, or with their 
archetypes. Fantastical or chimerical I call such as have no foundation 
in nature, nor have any conformity to that reality of being to which they 
are tacitly referred as to their archetypes. If we examine the several sorts 
of ideas before mentioned, we shall find, that, 

Sect. 2. Simple ideas all real. — First, our simple ideas are all real, all 
agree to the reality of things, not that they are all of them the images or 
representations of what does exist ; the contrary whereof, in all but the 
primary qualities of bodies, hath been already shown. But though white- 
ness and coldness are no more in snow than pain is, yet those ideas of 
whiteness and coldness, pain, &c. being in us the effects of powers in 
things without us, ordained by our Maker, to produce in us such sensations, 
they are real ideas in us, whereby we distinguish the qualities that are really in 
things themselves. For these several appearances being designed to be 
the marks whereby we are to know and distinguish things which we have 
to do with, our ideas do as well serve us to that purpose, and are as real 
distinguishing characters, whether they be only constant effects, or else 
exact resemblances of something in the things themselves ; the reality lying 
in that steady correspondence they have with the distinct constitutions of 
real beings. But whether they answer to those constitutions, as to causes 
or patterns, it matters not ; it suffices that they are constantly produced by 
them. And thus our simple ideas are all real and true, because they an- 
swer and agree to those powers of things which produce them in our 
minds ; that being all that is requisite to make them real, and not fictions 
at pleasure. For in simple ideas (as has been shown) the mind is wholly 
confined to the operation of things upon it, and can make to itself no simple 
idea more than what it has received. 

Sect. 3. Complex ideas are voluntary combinations. — Though the 
mind be wholly passive in respect of its simple ideas, yet I think we may 
say, it is not so in respect of its complex ideas : for those being combina- 
tions of simple ideas put together, and united under one general name, it is 
plain that the mind of man uses some kind of liberty in forming those com- 
plex ideas; how else comes it to pass that one man's idea of gold, or justice, 
is different from another's ] but because he has put in, or left out of his, 
some simple idea which the other has not. The question then is, which of 
these are real, and which barely imaginary combinations ] What collec- 
tions agree to the reality cf things, and what not] and to this I say, that, 

Sect. 4. Mixed modes, made of consistent ideas, are real. — Secondly, 
mixed modes and relations having no other reality but what they have in 
the minds of men, there is nothing more required to this kind of ideas to 
make them real, but that they be so framed, that there be a possibility of 
existing conformable to them. These ideas themselves being archetypes, 
cannot differ from their archetypes, and so cannot be chimerical, unless 
any one will jumble together in them inconsistent ideas. Indeed, as any 
of them have the names of a known language assigned to them, by which 
he that has them in his mind would signify them to others, so bare possi- 
bility of existing is not enough ; they must have a conformity to the ordi- 
nary signification of the name that is given them, that they may not be 
thought fantastical; as if a man would give the name of justice to that idea 
which common use calls liberality. But this fantasticalness relates more 
to propriety of speech than reality of ideas : for a man to be undisturbed 
in danger, sedately to consider what is fittest to be done, and to execute 
it steadily, is a mixed mode, or a complex idea of an action which may 
exist. But to be undisturbed in danger, without using one's reason or in- 
dustry, is what is also possible to be, and so is as real an idea as the other. 
Though the first of these, having the name courage given to it, may, in 
respect of that name, be a right or wrong idea : but the other, whilst it has 
not a common received name of any known language assigned to it, is 



Ch. 30. OF REAL AND FANTASTICAL IDEAS. 249 

not capable of any deformity, being made with no reference to any thing 
but itself. 

Sect. 5. Ideas of substances are real, when they agree with the exist- 
ence of things. — Thirdly, our complex ideas of substances being made all 
of them m reference to things existing without us, and intended to be re- 
presentations of substances, as they really are, are no farther real than as 
they are such combinations of simple ideas as are really united, and co- 
exist in things without us. On the contrary, those are fantastical, which 
are made up of such collections of simple ideas as were really never united, 
never were found together in any substance ; v.g. a rational creature, con- 
sisting of a horse's head, joined to a body of human shape, or such as the 
centaurs are described: or, a body yellow, very malleable, fusible, and 
fixed, but lighter than common water : or a uniform, unorganized body, 
consisting, as to sense, all of similar parts, with perception and voluntary 
motion joined to it. Whether such substances as these can possibly exist 
or no, it is probable we do not know : but be that as it will, these ideas of 
substances being made conformable to no pattern existing that we know, 
and consisting of such collections of ideas as no substance ever showed us 
united together, they ought to pass with us for barely imaginary: but much 
more are those complex ideas so, which contain in them any inconsistency 
or contradiction of their parts. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

OF ADEQUATE AND INADEQUATE IDEAS. 

Sect. 1. Adequate ideas are such as perfectly represent their arche- 
types. — Of our real ideas, some are adequate and some are inadequate. 
Those I call adequate, which perfectly represent those archetypes which 
the mind supposes them taken from ; which it intends them to stand for, 
and to which it refers them. Inadequate ideas are such which are but a 
partial or incomplete representation of those archetypes to which they are 
referred. Upon which account it is plain, 

Sect. 2. Simple ideas all adequate. — First, that all our simple ideas are 
adequate: because, being nothing but the effects of certain powers in 
things, fitted and ordained by God to produce such sensations in us, they 
cannot but be correspondent and adequate to those powers ; and we are 
sure they agree to the reality of things. For if sugar produce in us the 
ideas which we call whiteness and sweetness, we are sure there is a power 
in sugar to produce those ideas in our minds, or else they could not have 
been produced by it. And so each sensation answering the power that 
operates on any of our senses, the idea so produced is a real idea (and not 
a fiction of the mind, which has no power to produce any simple idea), and 
cannot but be adequate, since it ought only to answer that power ; and so 
all simple ideas are adequate. It is true, the things producing in us these 
eimple ideas, are but few of them denominated by us as if they were only 
the causes of them, but as if those ideas were real beings in them. For 
though fire be called painful to the touch, whereby is signified the power 
of producing in us the idea of pain, yet it is denominated also light and 
heat ; as if light and heat were really something in the fire more than a 
power to excite these ideas in us, and therefore are called qualities in, or 
of the fire. But these being nothing, in truth, but powers to excite such 
ideas in us, I must in that sense be understood when I speak of secondary 
qualities, as being in things ; or of their ideas, as being the objects that 
excite them in us. Such ways of speaking, though accommodated to the 
vu]gar notions, without which one cannot be well understood, yet truly 
2G 



250 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book J. 

signify nothing but those powers which are in things to excite certain 
sensations or ideas in us : since were there no fit organs to receive the 
impressions fire makes on the sight and touch, nor a mind joined to those 
organs to receive the ideas of ligTit and heat by those impressions from the 
fire or sun, there would yet be no more light or heat in the world than 
there would be pain, if there were no sensible creature to feel it, though 
the sun should continue just as it is now, and mount Etna flame higher 
than ever it did. Solidity and extension, and the termination of it, figure, 
with motion and rest, whereof we have the ideas, would be really in the 
world as they are, whether there were any sensible being to perceive them 
or no ; and therefore we have reason to look on those as the real modifi- 
cations of matter, and such are the exciting causes of all our various sen- 
sations from bodies. But this being an inquiry not belonging to this place, 
I shall enter no farther into it, but proceed to show what complex ideas 
are adequate, and what not. 

Sect. 3. Modes are all adequate. — Secondly, our complex ideas of 
modes being voluntary collections of simple ideas, which the mind puts to- 
gether without reference to any real archetypes or standing patterns exist- 
ing any where, are and cannot but be adequate ideas. Because they not 
being intended for copies of things really existing, but for archetypes made 
by the mind to rank and denominate things by, cannot want any thing; 
they having each of them that combination of ideas, and thereby that per- 
fection which the mind intended they should, so that the mind acquiesces 
in them, and can find nothing wanting. Thus, by having the idea of a 
figure, with three sides meeting at three angles, I have a complete idea, 
wherein I require nothing else to make it perfect. That the mind is satis- 
fied with the perfection of this its idea, is plain in that it does not con- 
ceive that any understanding hath, or can have, a more complete or per- 
fect idea of that thing it signifies by the word triangle, supposing it to 
exist, than itself has in that complex idea of three sides and three angles , 
in which is contained all that is or can be essential to it, or necessary to 
complete it, wherever or however it exists. But in our ideas of substances 
it is otherwise. For there desiring to copy things as they really do exist, 
and to represent to ourselves that constitution on which all their properties 
depend, we perceive our ideas attain not that perfection we intend ; we 
find they still want something we should be glad were in them, and so are 
all inadequate. But mixed. modes and relations, being archetypes without 
patterns, and so having nothing to represent but themselves, cannot but 
be adequate, every thing being so to itself. He that at first put together 
the idea of danger, perceived absence of disorder from fear, sedate con- 
sideration of what was justly to be done, and executing that without dis- 
turbance, or being deterred by the danger of it, had certainly in his mind 
that complex idea made up of that combination; and intending it to be no- 
thing else but what it is, nor to have in it any other simple ideas but what it 
hath, it could not also but be an adequate idea: and laying this up in his 
memory, with the name courage annexed to it, to signify to others, and 
denominate from thence any action he should observe to agree with it, had 
thereby a standard to measure and denominate actions by, as they agreed 
to it. This idea thus made, and laid up for a pattern, must necessarily be 
adequate, being referred to nothing else but itself, nor made by any other ori- 
ginal, but the good liking and will of him that first made this combination. 

Sect. 4. Modes, in reference to settled names, may be inadequate. — 
Indeed another coming after, and in conversation learning from him the 
word courage, may make an idea to which he gives the name courage, dif- 
ferent from what the first author applied it to, and has in his mind when 
he uses it. And in this case, if he designs that his idea in thinking should 
be conformable to the other's idea, as the name he uses in speaking is con- 
formable in sound to his, from whom he learned it, his idea may be very 



Ch. 31. OF ADEQUATE AND INADEQUATE IDEAS. 251 

wrong and inadequate : because, in this case, making- the other man's idea 
the pattern of his idea in thinking, as the other man's word or sound is the 
pattern of his in speaking, his idea is so far defective and inadequate, as 
it is distant from the archetype and pattern he refers it to, and intends to 
express and signify by the name he uses for it ; which name he would have 
to be a sign of the other man's idea (to which, in its proper use, it is pri- 
marily annexed) and of his own, as agreeing to it : to which, if his own 
does not exactly correspond,, it is faulty and inadequate. 

Sect. 5. Therefore these complex ideas of modes, when they are re- 
ferred by the mind, and intended to correspond to the ideas in the mind of 
some other intelligent being, expressed by the names we apply to them, 
they may be very deficient, wrong, and inadequate ; because they agree 
not to that which the mind designs to be their archetype and pattern ; in 
which respect only, any idea of modes can be wrong, imperfect, or inade- 
quate. And on this account our ideas of mixed modes are the most liable 
to be faulty of any other ; but this refers more to proper speaking than 
knowing right. 

Sect. 6. Ideas of substances, as referred to real essences, not ade- 
quate. — Thirdly, what ideas we have of substances, I have above shown. 
Now, those ideas have in the mind a double reference : 1. Sometimes they 
are referred to a supposed real essence of each species of things. 2. Some- 
times they are only designed to be pictures and representations in the 
mind, of things that do exist by ideas of those qualities that are discover- 
able in them. In both which ways these copies of those originals and 
archetypes are imperfect and inadequate. 

First, it is usual for men to make the names of substances stand for 
things, as supposed to have certain real essences, whereby they are of this 
or that species : and names standing for nothing but the ideas that are in 
men's minds, they must consequently refer their ideas to such real essen- 
ces as to their archetypes. That men (especially such as have been bred 
up in the learning taught in this part of the world) do suppose certain specih j 
essences of substances, which each individual, in its several kinds, is made 
conformable to, and partakes of, is so far from needing proof, that it will 
be thought strange if any one should do otherwise. And thus they ordi- 
narily apply the specific names they rank particular substances under to 
things as distinguished by such specific real essences. Who is there almost, 
who would not take it amiss, if it should be doubted, whether he called 
himself a man, with any other meaning, than as having the real essence 
of a man ? And yet if you demand what those real essences are, it is plain 
men are ignorant, and know them not. From whence it follows, that the 
ideas they have in their minds, being referred to real essences, as to arche- 
types which are unknown, must be so far from being adequate, that they 
cannot be supposed to be any representation of them at all. The com- 
plex ideas we have of substances are, as it has been shown, certain collec- 
tions of simple ideas that have been observed or supposed constantly to 
exist together. But such a complex idea cannot be the real essence of any 
substance ; for then the properties we discover in that body would depend 
on that complex idea, and be deducible from it, and their necessary con- 
nexion with it be known : as all properties of a triangle depend on, and as 
far as they are discoverable, are deducible from, the complex idea of three 
lines, including a space. But it is plain, that in our complex ideas of sub- 
stances, are not contained such ideas, on which all the other qualities 
that are to be found in them do depend. The common idea men have 
of iron, is a body of a certain colour, weight and hardness ; and a property 
that they look on as belonging to it, is malleableness. But yet this pro- 
perty has no necessary connexion with that complex idea, or any part of 
it; and there is no more reason to think that malleableness depends on that 
colour, weight and hardness, than that that colour, or that weight depends 



252 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

on its malleableness. And yet, though we know nothing of these reai 
essences, there is nothing more ordinary, than that men should attribute 
the sorts of things to such essences. The particular parcel of matter, 
which makes the ring I have on my finger, is forwardly, by most men, sup- 
posed to have a real essence, whereby it is gold, and from whence those 
qualities flow which I find in it, viz. its peculiar colour, weight, hardness, 
fusibility, fixedness, and change of colour upon a slight touch of mercury, 
&c. This essence, from which all these properties flow, when I inquire 
into it, and search after it, I plainly perceive I cannot discover ; the far- 
thest I can go, is only to presume, that it being nothing but body, its real 
essence, or internal constitution, on which these qualities depend, can be 
nothing but the figure, size, and connexion of its solid parts ; of neither of 
which having any distinct perception at all, can I have any idea of its es- 
sence, which is the cause that it has that particular shining yellowness, a 
greater weight than any thing I know of the same bulk, and a fitness to 
have its colour changed by the touch of quicksilver. If any one will say, 
that the real essence and internal constitution, on which these properties 
depend, is not the figure, size and arrangement or connexion of its solid 
parts, but something else, called its particular form, I am farther from hav- 
ing any idea of its real essence than I was before : for I have an idea of 
figure, size, and situation of solid parts in general, though I have none of 
the particular figure, size, or putting together of parts, whereby the quali- 
ties above mentioned are produced ; which qualities I find in that parti- 
cular parcel of matter that is on my finger, and not in another parcel of 
matter, with which I cut the pen I write with. But when I am told that some- 
thing besides the figure, size and posture of the solid parts of that body is 
its essence, something called substantial form : of that I confess I have no 
idea at all, but only of the sound form, which is far enough from an idea 
of its real essence or constitution. The like ignorance as I have of the 
real essence of this particular substance, I have also of the real essence 
of all other natural ones ; of which essences, I confess, I have no distinct 
ideas at all : and I am apt to suppose others, when they examine their 
own knowledge, will find in themselves, in this one point, the same sort 
of ignorance. 

Sect. 7. Now, then, when men apply to this particular parcel of mat- 
ter on my finger, a general name already in use, and denominate it gold, 
do they not ordinarily, or are they not understood to give it that name as 
belonging to a particular species of bodies, having a real internal essence ; 
by having of which essence, this particular substance comes to be of that 
species, and to be called by that name] If it be so, as it is plain it is, 
the name, by which things are marked, as having that essence, must be 
referred primarily to that essence; and consequently the idea to which 
that name is given must be referred also to the essence, and be intended 
to represent it. Which essence, since they, who so use the names, know 
not their ideas of substances, must be all inadequate in that respect, as not 
containing in them that real essence which the mind intends they should. 

Sect. 8. Ideas of substances, as collections of their qualities, are all 
inadequate. — Secondly, those who, neglecting that useless supposition of 
unknown real essences, whereby they are distinguished, endeavour to copy, 
the substances that exist in the world, by putting together the ideas of 
those sensible qualities that are found co-existing in them, though they 
come much nearer a likeness of them than those who imagine they know 
not what real specific essences ; yet they arrive not at perfectly adequate 
ideas of those substances they would thus copy into their minds ; nor do 
those copies exactly and fully contain all that is to be found in their arche- 
types. Because those qualities and powers of substances, whereof we 
make their complex ideas, are so many and various, that no man's com- 
plex idea contains them all. That our abstract ideas of substances do no* 



Ch. 31. OF ADEQUATE AND INADEQUATE IDEAS. 253 

contain in them all the simple ideas that are united in the things them- 
selves, it is evident, in that men do rarely put into their complex idea of 
any substance all the simple ideas they do know to exist in it. Because 
endeavouring to make the signification of their specific names as clear and 
as little cumbersome as they can, they make their specific ideas of the 
sorts of substances, for the most part, of a few of those simple ideas which 
are to be found in them : but these having no original precedency, or right 
to be put in, and make the specific idea more than others that are left out, 
it is plain that both these ways our ideas of substances are deficient and 
inadequate. These simple ideas, whereof we make our complex ones of 
substances, are all of them (bating only the figure and bulk of some sorts) 
powers, which being relations to other substances, we can never be sure 
that we know all the powers that are in any one body, till we have tried ' 
what changes it is fitted to give to, or receive from other substances, in 
their several ways of application : which being impossible to be tried upon 
any one body, much less upon all, it is impossible we should have adequate 
ideas of any substance made up of a collection of all its properties. 

Sect. 9. Whosoever first lit on a parcel of that sort of substance we de- 
note by the word gold, could not rationally take the bulk and figure he 
observed in that lump to depend on its real essence or internal constitu- 
tion. Therefore those never went into his idea of that species of body; 
but its peculiar colour, perhaps, and weight, were the first he abstracted 
from it to make the complex idea of that species. Which both are but 
powers ; the one to affect our eyes after such a manner, and to produce in 
us that idea we call yellow; and the other to force upwards any other body 
of equal bulk, they being put into a pair of equal scales, one against another. 
Another perhaps added to these the ideas of fusibility and fixedness, two 
other passive powers, in relation to the operation of fire upon it; another, 
its ductility and solubility in aq. regia, two other powers relating to the 
operation of other bodies, in changing its outward figure or separation of 
it into insensible parts. These, or parts of these, put together, usually 
make the complex idea in men's minds, of that sort of body we call gold. 

Sect. 10. But no one, who hath considered the properties of bodies in 
general, or this sort in particular, can doubt that this called gold has infinite 
other properties not contained in that complex idea. 

Some who have examined this species more accurately, could, I believe, 
enumerate ten times as many properties in gold, all of them as inseparable 
from its internal constitution as its colour or weight : and it is probable, 
if any one knew all the properties that are by divers men known of this 
metal, there would an hundred times as many ideas go to the complex 
idea of gold as any one man yet has in his ; and yet perhaps that not be 
the thousandth part of what is to be discovered in it. The changes which 
that one body is apt to receive, and make in other bodies upon a due appli- 
cation, exceeding far not only what we know, but what we are apt to 
imagine. Which will not appear so much a paradox to any one, who will 
but consider how far men are yet from knowing all the properties of that 
one, no very compound figure, a triangle; though it be no small number 
i.hat are already by mathematicians discovered of it. 

Sect. 11. Ideas of substances, as collections of their qualities, are all 
inadequate. — So that all our complex ideas of substances are imperfect 
and inadequate. Which would be so also in mathematical figures, if we 
were to have our complex ideas of them only by collecting their properties 
in reference to other figures. How uncertain and imperfect would our 
ideas be of an ellipsis, if we had no other idea of it but some few of its 
properties 1 Whereas having in our plain idea the whole essence of that 
figure, we from thence discover those properties, and demonstratively see 
how they flow, and are inseparable from it. 



254 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2, 

Sect. 12. Simple ideas 'inlvTra., and adequate. — Thus the mind has 
three sorts of abstract ideas, or nominal essences : 

First, simple ideas, which are 2*7 v^-*, or copies, but yet certainly ade- 
quate. Because being intended to express nothing but the power in things 
to produce in the mind such a sensation, that sensation, when it is pro- 
duced, cannot but be the effect of that power. So the paper I write on, 
naving the power, in the light (I speak according to the common notion 
of light) to produce in me the sensation which I call white, it cannot but 
be the effect of such a power, in something without the mind ; since the 
mind has not the power to produce any such idea itself, and being meant 
for nothing else but the effect of such a power, that simple idea is real and 
adequate : the sensation of white, in my mind, being the effect of tha' 
power which is in the paper to produce it, is perfectly adequate to that 
power, or else that power would produce a different idea. 

Sect. 13. Ideas of substances are 'infon*, inadequate. — Secondly, the 
complex ideas of substances are ectypes, copies too ; but not perfect ones, 
not adequate ; which is very evident to the mind, in that it plainly per- 
ceives that whatever collection of simple ideas it makes of any substance 
that exists, it cannot be sure that it exactly answers all that are in that 
substance ; since not having tried all the operations of all other substances 
upon it, and found all the alterations it would receive from, or cause in 
other substances, it cannot have an exact adequate collection of all its 
active and passive capacities ; and so not have an adequate complex idea 
of the powers of any substance existing, and its relations, which is that 
sort of complex idea of substances we have. And, after all, if we could 
have, and actually had in our complex idea, an exact collection of all the 
secondary qualities or powers of any substance, we should not yet thereby 
have an idea of the essence of that thing. For since the powers or quali- 
ties that are observable by us, are not the real essence of that substance, 
but depend on it, and flow from it, any collection whatsoever of these 
qualities, cannot be the real essence of that thing. Whereby it is plain, 
that our ideas of substances are not adequate, are not what the mind in- 
tends them to be. Besides, a man has no idea of substance in general 
nor knows what substance is in itself. 

Sect. 14. Ideas of modes and relations are archetypes, and cannot 
but be adequate. — Thirdly, complex ideas of modes and relations are ori- 
ginals and archetypes ; are not copies, nor made after the pattern of any 
real existence, to which the mind intends them to be conformable, and ex- 
actly to answer. These being such collections of simple ideas that the 
mind itself puts together, and such collections, that each of them contains 
in it precisely all that the mind intends it should, they are archetypes and 
essences of modes that may exist, and so are designed only for, and belong 
only to such modes, as when they do exist, have an exact conformity with 
those complex ideas. The ideas therefore of modes and relations cannot 
but be adequate. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

OF TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS. 

Sect. 1. Truth and falsehood properly belong to propositions. — Though 
truth and falsehood belong, in propriety of speech, only to propo- 
sitions, yet ideas are oftentimes termed true or false (as what words are 
there that are not used with great latitude, and with some deviation from 
their strict and proper significations?) Though, I think, that wh6n 



Ch. 32. OF TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS. 255 

ideas themselves are termed true or false, there is still some secret or tacit 
proposition, which is the foundation of that denomination : as we shall see, 
if we examine the particular occasions wherein they come to be called 
true or false. In all which we shall find some kind of affirmation or ne- 
gation, which is the reason of that denomination. For our ideas being 
nothing but bare appearances or perceptions in our minds, cannot properly 
and simply in themselves be said to be true or false, no more than a single 
name of any thing can be said to be true or false. 

Sect. 2. Metaphysical truth contains a tacit proposition. — Indeed both 
ideas and words may be said to be true in a metaphysical sense of the 
word truth, as all other things, that any way exist, are said to be true, i. e. 
really to be such as they exist. Though in things called true, even in that 
sense, there is perhaps a secret reference to our ideas looked upon as the 
standards of that truth, which amounts to a mental proposition, though it 
be usually not taken notice of. 

Sect. 3. No idea, as an appearance in the mind, true or false.— -But 
it is not in that metaphysical sense of truth which we inquire here, when 
we examine whether our ideas are capable of being true or false, but in 
the more ordinary acceptation of those words: and so I say, that the ideas 
in our minds being only so many perceptions, or appearances there, none 
of them are false ; the idea of a centaur having no more falsehood in it, 
when it appears in our minds, than the name centaur has falsehood in it 
when it is pronounced by our mouths or written on paper. For truth or 
falsehood lying always in some affirmation, or negation, mental or verbal, 
our ideas are not capable, any of them, of being false, till the mind passes 
some judgment on them ; that is, affirms or denies something of them. 

Sect. 4. Ideas referred to any thing, may be true or false. — Whenever 
the mind refers any of its ideas to any thing extraneous to them, they are 
then capable to be called true or false. Because the mind in such a re- 
ference makes a tacit supposition of their conformity to that thing ; which 
supposition, as it happens to be true or false, so the ideas themselves come 
fo be denominated. The most usual cases, wherein this happens, are 
«,hese following : 

Sect. 5. Other men's ideas real existences, and supposed real essen- 
ces, are what men usually refer their ideas to. — First, when the mind 
supposes any idea it has conformable to that in other men's minds, called 
by the same common name ; v. g. when the mind intends or judges its 
ideas of justice, temperance, religion, to be the same with what other 
men give those names to. 

Secondly, when the mind supposes any idea it has in itself to be con- 
formable to some real existence. Thus the two ideas of a man and a cen- 
taur, supposed to be the ideas of real substances, are the one true, and 
the other false ; the one having a conformity to what has really existed, 
the other not. 

Thirdly, when the mind refers any of its ideas to the real constitution 
and essence of any thing whereon all its properties depend : and thus the 
greatest part, if not all our ideas of substances, are false. 

Sect. 6. The cause of such references. — These suppositions the mind 
is very apt tacitly to make concerning its own ideas. But yet, if we will 
examine it, we shall find it is chiefly, if not only 5 concerning its abstract com- 
plex ideas. For the natural tendency of the mind being towards knowledge ; 
and finding that, if it should proceed by and dwell upon any particular 
things, its progress would be very slow, and its work endless : therefore to 
shorten its way to knowledge, and make each perception more compre- 
hensive ; the first thing it does, as the foundation of the easier enlarging 
its knowledge, eitner by contemplation of the things themselves that it 
would know, or conference with others about them, is to bind them into 
bundles, and rank them so into sorts, that what knowledge it gets of any 



256 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

of them, it may thereby with assurance extend to all of that sort ; and so 
advance by larger steps in that, which is its great business, knowledge. 
This, as I have elsewhere shewn, is the reason why we collect things 
under comprehensive ideas, with names annexed to them, into genera and 
species, i. e. into kinds and soits. 

Sect. 7. If therefore we will warily attend to the motions of the mind, 
and observe what course it usually takes in its way to knowledge, we shall, 
I think, find that the mind having got any idea, which it thinks it may 
have use of, either in contemplation or discourse, the first thing it does is 
to abstract it, and then get a name to it ; and so lay it up in its storehouse, 
the memory, as containing the essence of a sort of things, of which that 
name is always to be the mark. Hence it is that we may often observe, 
that when any one sees a new thing of a kind that he knows not, he pre- 
sently asks what it is, meaning by that inquiry nothing but the name. As 
if the name carried with it the knowledge of the species, or the essence 
of it : whereof it is indeed used as the mark, and is generally supposed 
annexed to it. 

Sect. 8. The cause of such references. — But this abstract idea being 
something in the mind between the thing that exists and the name that 
is given to it ; it is in our ideas, that both the Tightness of our knowledge, 
and the propriety or intelligibleness of our speaking, consists. And hence 
it is, that men are so forward to suppose, that the abstract ideas they 
have in their minds, are such as agree to the things existing without them, 
to which they are referred ; and are the same also, to which the names 
they give them do, by the use and propriety of that language, belong. 
For without this double conformity of their ideas, they find they should both 
think amiss of things in themselves, and talk of them unintelligibly to others. 

Sect. 9. Sirnple ideas may be false, in reference to others of the same 
name, but are least liable to be so. — First, then, I say, that when the truth 
of our ideas is judged of by the conformity they have to the ideas which 
other men have, and commonly signify by the same name, they may be 
any of them false. But yet simple ideas are least of all liable to be so 
mistaken ; because a man by his senses, and every day's observation, may 
easily satisfy himself what the simple ideas are which their several names 
that are in common use stand for, they being but few in number, and such 
as if he doubts or mistakes in, he may easily rectify, by the objects they, 
are to be found in. Therefore it is seldom that any one mistakes in his 
names of simple ideas, or applies the name red to the idea of green, or the 
name sweet to the idea bitter ; much less are men apt to confound the 
names of ideas belonging to different senses, and call a colour by the name 
of a taste, &c. ; whereby it is evident that the simple ideas they call by 
any name are commonly the same that others have and mean when they 
use the same names. 

Sect. 10. Ideas of mixed modes most liable to be false in this sense. — 
Complex ideas are much more liable to be false in this respect ; and the 
complex ideas of mixed modes much more than those of substances : be- 
cause in substances (especially those which the common and unborrowed 
names of any language are applied to) some remarkable sensible qualities, 
serving ordinarily to distinguish one sort from another, easily preserve 
those, who take any care in the use of their words, from applying them 
to sorts of substances to which they do not at all belong. But in mixed 
modes we are much more uncertain ; it being not so easy to determine of 
several actions, whether they are to be called justice or cruelty, liberality 
or prodigality. And so in referring our ideas to those of other men, called 
by the same names, ours may be false ; and the idea in our minds, which 
we express by the word justice, may perhaps be that which ought to have 
-another name. 

Sect. 11. Or at least to be thought false. — But whether or no our 



Ch. 32. . OF TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS. 25? 

ideas of mixed modes are more liable than any sort to be different from those 
of other men, which are marked by the same names, this at least is certain, that 
this sort of falsehood is much more familiarly attributed to our ideas of mixed 
modes than to any other. When a man is thought to have a false idea of 
justice, or gratitude, or glory, it is for no other reason but that his agrees not 
with the ideas which each of those names are the signs of in otner men. 

Sect. 12. And why. — The reason whereof seems to me to be this : that the 
abstract ideas of mixed modes being men's voluntary combinations of such a 
precise collection of simple ideas, — and so the essence of each species being 
made by men alone, whereof we have no other sensible standard existing any 
where but the name itself, or the definition of that name, — we have nothing 
else to refer these our ideas of mixed modes to, as a standard to which we 
would conform them, but the ideas of those who are thought to use those 
names in their most proper significations ; and so, as our ideas conform or dif- 
fer from them, they pass for true or false. And thus much concerning the 
truth and falsehood of our ideas, in reference to their names. 

Sect. 13. As referred to real existences, none of our ideas can be false, 
but those of substances.— Secondly, as to the truth and falsehood of our ideas, 
in reference to the real existence of things ; when that is made the standard 
of their truth, none of them can be termed false, but only our complex ideas 
of substances. 

Sect. 14. First, simple ideas in this sense not false, and why. — First, our 
simple ideas being barely such perceptions as God has fitted us to receive, 
and given power to external objects to produce in us by established laws and 
ways, suitable to his wisdom and goodness, though incomprehensible to us, 
their truth consists in nothing else but in such appearances as are produced 
in us, and must be suitable to those powers he has placed in external objects, 
or else they could not be produced in us : and thus answering those powers, 
they are what they should be, true ideas. Nor do they become liable to any 
imputation of falsehood, if the mind (as in most men I believe it does) judges 
these ideas to be in the things themselves. For God, in his wisdom, having set 
them as marks of distinction in things, whereby we may be able to discern 
one thing from another, and so choose any of them for our uses, as we have 
occasion ; it alters not the nature of our simple idea, whether we think that 
the idea of blue be in the violet itself, or m our mind only; and only the power 
of producing it by the texture of its parts, reflecting the particles of light 
after a certain manner, to be in the violet itself. For that texture in the ob- 
ject, by a regular and constant operation, producing the same idea of blue in 
us, it serves us to distinguish by our eyes, that from any other thing, whe- 
ther that distinguishing mark, as it is really in the violet, be only a peculiar 
texture of parts, or else that very colour, the idea whereof (which is in us) 
is the exact resemblance. And it is equally from that appearance to be de- 
nominated blue, whether it be that real colour, or only a peculiar texture in 
it, that causes in us that idea : since the name blue notes properly nothing 
but that mark of distinction that is in a violet, discernible only by our eyes, 
whatever it consists in ; that being beyond our capacities distinctly to know, 
and perhaps would be of less use to us if we had faculties to discern. 

Sect. 15. Though one man's idea of blue should be different from an- 
others. — Neither would it carry any imputation of falsehood to our simple 
ideas, if, by the different structure of our organs, it were so ordered, that the 
same object should produce in several men's minds different ideas at the same 
time ; v. g. if the idea that a violet produced in one man's mind by his eyes, 
were the same that a marigold produced in another man's, and vice versa. 
For since this could never be known, because one man's mind could not pass 
into another man's body, to perceive what appearances were produced by 
those organs ; neither the ideas hereby, nor the names, would be at all con- 
founded, or any falsehood be in either. For all things that had the texture of 
a violet, producing constantly the idea that he called blue ; and those which 
,had the texture of a marigold, producing constantly the idea which he as con- 
2 H 



253 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book % 

stantly called yellow ; whatever those appearances were in his mind, he 
would be able as regularly to distinguish things for his use by those appear- 
ances, and understand and signify those distinctions marked by the names 
blue and yellow, as if the appearances, or ideas in his mind, received from 
those two flowers, were exactly the same with the ideas in other men's minds. 
1 am nevertheless very apt to think that the sensible ideas produced by any 
object in different men's minds are most commonly very near and undiscern- 
ibly alike. For which opinion, I think, there might be many reasons offered : 
but that being besides my present business, I shall not trouble my reader with 
them; but only mind him, that the contrary supposition, if it could be proved, 
is of little use, either for the improvement of our knowledge, or the conve 
niency of life; and so we need not trouble ourselves to examine it. 

Sect. 16. First, simple ideas in this sense not false, and why. — From 
what has been said concerning our simple ideas, I think it evident, that 
our simple ideas can none of them be false in respect of things existing with- 
out us. For the truth of these appearances, or perceptions in our minds, 
consisting, as has been said, only in their being answerable to the powers in 
external objects to produce by our senses such appearances in us ; — and each 
of them being in the mind, such as it is, suitable to the power that produced 
it, and which alone it represents : — it cannot upon that account, or as re- 
ferred to such a pattern, be false. Blue or yellow, bitter or sweet, can never 
be false ideas : these perceptions in the mind are just such as they are there, 
answering the powers appointed by God to produce them ; and so are truly 
what they are and are intended to be. Indeed the names may be misapplied, 
but that in this respect makes no falsehood in the ideas ; as if a man ignorant 
in the English tongue should call purple scarlet. 

Sect. 17. Secondly, modes not false. — Secondly, neither can our complex 
ideas of modes, in reference to the essence of any thing really existing, be 
false. Because whatever complex idea I have of any mode, it hath no re- 
ference to any pattern existing and made by nature : it is not supposed to 
contain in it any other ideas than what it hath ; nor to represent any thing but 
such a complication of ideas as it does. Thus when I have the idea of such 
an action of a man, who forbears to afford himself such meat, drink, and cloth- 
ing, and other conveniences of life, as his riches and estate will be sufficient 
to supply, and his station requires, I have no false idea ; but such an one as 
represents an action, either as I find or imagine it; and so is capable of 
neither truth nor falsehood. But when I give the name frugality or virtue to 
this action, then it may be called a false idea, if thereby it be supposed to 
agree with that idea, to which, in propriety of speech, the name of frugality 
doth belong ; or to be conformable to that law, which is the standard of virtue 
and vice. 

Sect. 18. Thirdly, ideas of substances, when false. — Thirdly, our com- 
plex ideas of substances being all referred to patterns in things themselves, 
may be false. That they are all false, when looked upon as the representa- 
tions of the unknown essences of things, is so evident, that there needs no- 
thing to be said of it. I shall therefore pass over that chimerical supposition, 
and consider them as collections of simple ideas in the mind, taken from com- 
binations of simple ideas existing together, constantly in things, of which 
patterns they are the supposed copies : and in this reference of them to the 
existence of things they are false ideas. 1. When they put together simple 
ideas, which in the real existence of things have no union ; as when to the 
shape and size that exist together in a horse is joined, in the same complex 
idea, the power of barking like a dog; which three ideas, however put to- 
gether into one in the mind, were never united in nature ; and this there- 
fore may be called a false idea of a horse. 2. Ideas of substances are, in this 
respect, also false, when from any collection of simple ideas that do always 
exist together, there is separated, by a direct negation, any other simple idea 
which is constantly joined with them. Thus, if to extension, solidity, fusibi- 
lity, the peculiar weightiness and yellow colour of gold, any one join in his 



Oh. 32. OF TRUE AND FALSE IDEAS. 259 

thoughts the negation of a greater degree of fixedness than is in ]ead or cop- 
per, he may be said to have a false complex idea, as well as when he joins to 
those other simple ones the idea of perfect absolute fixedness. For either 
way, the complex idea of gold being made up of such simple ones as have no 
union in nature, may be termed false. But if we leave out of this his com- 
plex idea, that of fixedness quite, without either actually joining to, or sepa- 
rating of it from the rest in his mind, it is, I think, to be looked on as an 
inadequate and imperfect idea, rather than a false one ; since, though it contains 
not all the simple ideas that are united in nature, yet it puts none together 
but what do really exist together. 

Sect. 19. Truth or falsehood always supposes affirmation or negation. — 
Though in compliance with the ordinary way of speaking I have showed 
in what sense and upon what ground our ideas may be sometimes called true 
or false, yet if we look a little nearer into the matter, in all cases where any 
idea is called true or false, it is "from some judgment that the mind makes, or 
is supposed to make, that is true or false. For truth or falsehood being never 
without some affirmation or negation, express or tacit, it is not to be fount! 
but where signs are joined and separated, according to the agreement or disa- 
greement of the things they stand for. The signs we chiefly use are either 
ideas or words, wherewith we make either mental or verbal prepositions. 
Truth lies in so joining or separating these representatives, as the things they 
stand for do in themselves agree or disagree ; and falsehood in the contrary, 
as shall be more fully shown hereafter. 

Sect. 20. Ideas in themselves neither true nor false. — Any idea then which 
we have in our minds, whether conformable or not to the existence of things, 
or to any idea in the minds of other men, cannot properly for this alone be 
called false. For these representations, if they have nothing in them but 
what is really existing in things without, cannot be thought false, being exact 
representations of something ; nor yet, if they have any thing in them differing 
from the reality of things, can they properly be said to be false representa- 
tions, or ideas of things they do not represent. But the mistake and false- 
hood is, 

Sect. 21. But are false^—1. When judged agreeable to another man's 
idea without being so. — First, when the mind having any idea, it judges and 
concludes it the same that is in other men's minds, signified by the same 
name ; or that it is conformable to the ordinary received signification or de- 
finition of that word, when indeed it is not : which is the most usual mistake 
in mixed modes, though other ideas also are liable to it. 

Sect. 22. 2. When judged to agree to real existence when they do not. 
— Secondly, when it having a complex idea made up of such a collection of 
simple ones as nature never puts together, it judges it to agree to a species 
of creatures really existing; as when it joins the weight of tin to the colour, 
fusibility, and fixedness of gold. 

Sect. 23. 3. When judged adequate, without being so. — Thirdly, when 
in its complex idea it has united a certain number of simple ideas that do 
really exist together in some sort of creatures, but has also left out others as 
much inseparable, it judges this to be a perfect complete idea of a sort of things 
which really it is not; v. g. having joined the ideas of substance, yellow, 
malleable, most heavy, and fusible, it takes that complex idea to be the com- 
plete idea of gold, when yet its peculiar fixedness and solubility in aqua regia 
are as inseparable from those other ideas or qualities of that body, as they are 
one from another. 

Sect. 24. 4. When judged to represent the real essence. Fourthly, the 
mistake is yet greater, when I judge that this complex idea contains in it the 
real essence of any body existing, when at least it contains but some few of 
those properties which flow from its real essence and constitution. I say, 
only some few of those properties ; for those properties consisting mostly in 
the active and passive powers it has, in reference to other things, all that are 
vulgarly known of any one body, of which the complex idea of that kind of 



280 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

things is usually made, are but a very few, in comparison of what a man, that 
has several ways tried and examined it, knows of that one sort of things : 
and all that the most expert man knows are but a few, in comparison of what 
are really in that body, and depend on its internal or essential constitution. 
The essence of a triangie lies in a very little compass, consists in a very few 
ideas, — three lines including a space make up that essence, — but the proper- 
ties that flow from this essence are more than can be easily known or enu- 
merated. So I imagine it is in substances, their real essences lie in a little 
compass, though the properties flowing from that internal constitution are 
endless. 

Sect. 25. Ideas, when false. — To conclude, a man having no notion of 
any thing without him, but by the idea he has of it in his mind (which idea 
he has a power to call by what name he pleases,) he may indeed make an 
idea neither answering the reason of things, nor agreeing to the idea com- 
monly signified by other people's words : but cannot make a wrong or false 
idea of a thing, which is no otherwise known to him but by the idea he has 
of it : v. g. when I frame an idea of the legs, arms and body of a man, and 
join to this a horse's head and neck, I do not make a false idea of any thing ; 
because it represents nothing without me. But when I call it a man or 
Tartar, and imagine it to represent some real being without me, or to be the 
same idea that others call by the same name ; in either of these cases I may 
err. And upon this account it is that it comes to be termed a false idea ; 
though indeed the falsehood lies not in the idea, but in that tacit mental pro- 
position wherein a conformity and resemblance is attributed to it, which it 
has not. But yet, if having framed such an idea in my mind, without thinking 
either that existence, or the name man or Tartar, belongs to it, I will call it 
man or Tartar, I may be justly thought fantastical in the naming, but not 
erroneous in my judgment ; nor the idea any way false. 

Sect. 26. More properly to be called right or wrong. — Upon the whole 
matter, I think that our ideas, as they are considered by the mind, either in 
reference to the proper signification of their names, or in reference to the 
reality of things, may very fitly be called right or wrong ideas, according as 
they agree or disagree to those patterns to which they are referred. But if 
any one had rather call them true or false, it is fit he use a liberty, which 
every one has, to call things by those names he thinks best ; though, in pro- 
priety of speech, truth or falsehood will, I think, scarce agree to them, but 
as they, some way or other, virtually contain in them some mental proposi- 
tion. The ideas that are in a man's mind, simply considered, cannot be 
wrong, unless complex ones, wherein inconsistent parts are jumbled together. 
All other ideas are in themselves right, and the knowledge about them right 
and true knowledge : but when we come to refer them to any thing, as to 
their patterns and archetypes, then they are capable of being wrong, as far as 
they disagree with such archetypes. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 

Sect. 1. Something unreasonable in most men. — There is scarce any one 
that does not observe something that seems odd to him, and is in itself really 
extravagant in the opinions, reasonings, and actions of other men. The least 
flaw of this kind, if at all different from his own, every one is quick-sighted 
enough to espy in another, and will by the authority of reason forwardly con- 
demn, though he be guilty of much greater unreasonableness in his own 
tenets and conduct, which he never perceives, and will very hardly, if at all, 
be convinced of. 



£h. 33. OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 261 

Sect. 2. Not wholly from self-love. — This proceeds not wholly from self- 
love, though that has often a great hand in it. Men of fair minds, and not 
given up to the overweening of self-flattery, are frequently guilty of it ; and 
in many cases one with amazement hears the arguings, and is astonished at 
the obstinacy of a worthy man, who yields not to the evidence of reason, 
though laid before him as clear as daylight. 

Sect. 3. Not from education. — This sort of unreasonableness is usually 
imputed to education and prejudice, and for the most part truly enough, though 
that reaches not the bottom of the disease, nor shows distinctly enough 
whence it rises, or wherein it lies. Education is often rightly assigned for the 
cause, and prejudice is a good general name for the thing itself; but yet, 1 
think, he ought to look a little farther, who would trace this sort of madness 
to the root it springs from, and so explain it, as to show whence this flaw 
has its original in very sober and rational minds, and wherein it consists. 

Sect. 4. A degree of madness. — I shall be pardoned for calling it by so 
harsh a name as madness, when it is considered, that opposition to reason de- 
serves that name, and is really madness ; and there is scarce a man so free 
from it, but that if he should always, on all occasions, argue or do as in some 
cases he constantly does, would not be thought fitter for Bedlam than civil 
conversation. I do not here mean when he is under the power of an unruly 
passion, but in the steady calm course of his life. That which will yet more 
apologize for this harsh name, and ungrateful imputation on the greatest part 
of mankind, is, that inquiring a little by the by into the nature of madness, 
b. ii. c. xi. sect. 13, I found it to spring from the very same root, and to 
depend on the very same cause we are here speaking of. This consideration 
of the thing itself, at a time when I thought not the least on the subject 
which I am now treating of, suggested it to me. And if this be a weakness 
to which all men are so liable ; if this be a taint which so universally infects 
mankind ; the greater care should be taken to lay it open under its due name, 
thereby to excite the greater care in its prevention and cure. 

Sect. 5. From a wrong connexion of ideas. — Some of our ideas have a 
natural correspondence and connexion one with another : it is the office and 
excellency of our reason to trace these, and hold them together in that union 
and correspondence which is founded in their peculiar beings. Besides this, 
there is another connexion of ideas wholly owing to chance or custom : ideas, 
that in themselves are not all of kin, come to be so united in some men's minds, 
that it is very hard to separate them; they always keep in company, and the 
one no sooner at any time comes into the understanding, but its associate 
appears with it ; and if they are more than two, which are thus united, the 
whole gang, always inseparable, show themselves together. 

Sect. 6. This connexion how made. — This strong combination of ideas, 
not allied by nature, the mind makes in itself either voluntarily or by chance ; 
and hence it comes in different men to be very different, according to their 
different inclinations, education, interests, &c. Custom settles habits of 
thinking in the understanding, as well as of determining in the will, and of 
motions in the body; all which seem to be but trains of motion in the animal 
spirits, which, once set agoing, continue in the same steps they have been 
used to, which, by often treading, are worn into a smooth path, and the mo- 
tion in it becomes easy, and as it were natural. As far as we can compre- 
hend thinking, thus ideas seem to be produced in our minds ; or if they are 
not, this may serve to explain their following one another in an habitual train, 
when once they are put into their track, as well as it does to explain such 
motions of the body. A musician used to any tune will find, that let it but once 
begin in his head, the ideas of the several notes of it will follow one another 
orderly in his understanding, without any care or attention, as regularly as 
his angers move orderly over the keys of the organ to play out the tune he 
has begun, though his unattentive thoughts be elsewhere a wandering. 
Whether the natural cause of these ideas, as well as of that regular dancing 
of his fingers, be the motion of his animal spirits, I will not determine, how 



262 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2 

probable soever, by this instance, it appears to be so : but this may help us a 
little to conceive of intellectual habits, and of the tying- together of ideas. 

Sect. 7. Some antipathies an effect of it. — That there are such associa 
tions of them made by custom in the minds of most men, I think nobody will 
question, who has well considered himself or others ; and to this, perhaps, 
might be justly attributed most of the sympathies and antipathies observable 
in men, which work as strongly, and produce as regular effects as if they were 
natural, and are therefore called so, though they at first had no other original 
but the accidental connexion of two ideas, which either the strength of the 
impression, or future indulgence so united, that they always afterward kept 
company together in that man's mind, as if they were but one idea. I say 
most of the antipathies, I do not say all, for some of them are truly natural, 
depend upon our original constitution, and are born with us ; but a great part 
of those, which are counted natural, would have been known to be from un- 
heeded, though, perhaps, early impressions, or wanton fancies at first, which 
would have been acknowledged the original of them, if they had been warily 
observed. A grown person surfeiting with honey, no sooner hears the name 
of it-, but his fancy immediately carries sickness and qualms to his stomach, 
and he cannot bear the very idea of it; other ideas of dislike, and sickness, 
and vomiting, presently accompany it, and he is disturbed, but he knows 
from whence to date this weakness, and can tell how he got this indis- 
position. Had this happened to him by an overdose of honey, when a child, 
all the same effects would have followed, but the cause would have been mis-, 
taken, and the antipathy counted natural. 

Sect. 8. I mention this not out of any great necessity there is in this pre- 
sent argument, to distinguish nicely between natural and acquired antipathies ; 
but I take notice of it for another purpose, viz. that those who have children, 
or the charge of their education, would think it worth their while diligently 
to watch, and carefully to prevent the undue connexion of ideas in the minds 
of young people. This is the time most susceptible of lasting impressions; 
and though those relating to the health of the body are by discreet people 
minded and fenced against, yet I am apt to doubt, that those which relate 
more peculiarly to the mind, and terminate in the understanding or passions, 
have been much less heeded than the thing deserves : nay, those relating 
purely to the understanding, have, as I suspect, been by most men wholly 
overlooked. 

Sect. 9. A great cause of errors. — This wrong connexion in our minds 
of ideas, in themselves loose and independent one of another, has such an in- 
fluence, and is of so great force to set us awry in our actions, as well moral 
as natural passions, reasonings, and notions themselves, that perhaps there is 
not any one thing that deserves more to be looked after. 

Sect. 10. Instances. — The ideas of goblins and sprights have really no 
more to do with darkness than light : yet let but a foolish maid inculcate these 
often on the mind of a child, and raise them there together, possibly he shall 
never be able to separate them again so long as he lives ; but darkness shall 
for ever afterward bring with it those frightful ideas, and they shall be so 
joined that he can no more bear the one than the other. 

Sect. 11. A man receives a sensible injury from another, thinks on the 
man and that action over and over ; and by ruminating on them strongly, or 
much in his mind, so cements those two ideas together, that he makes them 
almost one ; never thinks on the man, but the pain and displeasure he suffered 
come into his mind with it, so that he scarce distinguishes them, but has as 
much an aversion for the one as the other. Thus hatreds are often begotten 
from slight and almost innocent occasions, and quarrels propagated and con- 
tinued in the world. 

Sect. 12. A man has suffered pain or sickness in any place ; he saw hi? 
friend die in such a room ; though these have in nature nothing to do one 
with another, yet when the idea of the place occurs to his mind, it brings 
(the impression being once made) that of the pain and displeasure with 



Oh. 33. OF THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS. 263 

it ; he confounds them in his mind, and can as little bear the one as the. 
other. 

Sect. 13. Why time cures some disorders in the mind, which reason can- 
not. — When this combination is settled, and while it lasts, it is not in the 
power of reason to help us, and relieve us from the effects of it. Ideas in 
our minds, when they are there, will operate according to their natures and 
circumstances ; and here we see the cause why time cures certain affections, 
which reason, though in the right, and allowed to be so, has not power over, 
nor is able against them to prevail with those who are apt to hearken to it in 
other cases. The death of a child, that was the daily delight of his mother's 
eyes, and joy of her soul, rends from her heart the whole comfort of her life, 
and gives her all the torment imaginable ; use the consolations of reason in 
this case, and you were as good preach ease to one on the rack, and hope 
to allay, by rational discourses, the pain of his joints tearing asunder. Till 
time has by disuse separated the sense of that enjoyment, and its loss from 
the idea of the child returning to her memory, all representations, though 
ever so reasonable, are in vain ; and therefore some, in whom the union be- 
tween these ideas is never dissolved, spend their lives in mourning, and 
carry an incurable sorrow to their graves. 

Sect. 14. Farther instances of the effect of the association of ideas. — A 
friend of mine knew one perfectly cured of madness, by a very harsh and 
offensive operation. The gentleman, who was thus recovered, with great 
sense of gratitude and acknowledgment, owned the cure all his life after, as 
the greatest obligation he could have received ; but whatever gratitude and 
reason suggested to him, he could never bear the sight of the operator : that 
image brought back with it the idea of that agony which he suffered from his 
hands, which was too mighty and intolerable for him to endure. 

Sect. 15. Many children imputing the pain they endured at school to their 
books they were corrected for, so join those ideas together, that a book be- 
comes their aversion, and they are never reconciled to the study and use of 
them all their lives after : and thus reading becomes a torment to them , 
which otherwise possibly they might have made the greatest pleasure of their 
lives. There are rooms convenient enough, that some men cannot study in, 
and fashions of vessels, which, though ever so clean and commodious, they 
cannot drink out of, and that by reason of some accidental ideas which are 
annexed to them, and make them offensive : and who is there that hath not 
observed some man to flag at the appearance, or in the company of some certain 
person not otherwise superior to him, but because having once on some oc- 
casion got the ascendant, the idea of authority and distance goes along 'with 
that of the person, and he that has been thus subjected is not able to sepa- 
rate them] 

Sect. 16. Instances of this kind are so plentiful every where, that if I add 
one more, it is only for the pleasant oddness of it. It is of a young gentle- 
man, who having learned to dance, and that to great perfection, there happen- 
ed to stand an old trunk in the room where he learned. The idea of this re- 
markable piece of household stuff had so mixed itself with the turns and steps 
of all his dances, that though in that chamber he could dance excellently well, 
yet it was only whilst that trunk was there ; nor could he perform well in any 
ether place, unless that or some such other trunk had its due position in tie 
room. If this story shall be suspected to be dressed up with some comical cir- 
cumstances, a little beyond precise nature, I answer for myself, that I had it 
some years since from a very sober and worthy man, upon his own know- 
ledge, as I report it: and I dare say, there are very few inquisitive persons, 
who read this, who have not met with accounts, if not examples, of this nature, 
that may parallel, or at least justify this. 

Sect. 17. Its influence on intellectual habits. — Intellectual habits and de- 
fects this way contracted are not less frequent and powerful, though less 
observed. Let the ideas of being and matter be strongly joined either by edu- 
cation or much thought, whilst these are still combined in the mind, wha* 



264 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 2. 

notions, what reasonings will there be about separate spirits 1 Let custom 
irom the very childhood have joined figure and shape to the idea of God, and 
what absurdities will that mind be liable to about the Deity? 

Let the idea of infallibility be inseparably joined to any person, and these 
two constantly together possess the mind ; and then one body, in two places 
at once, shall, unexamined, be swallowed for a certain truth, by an implicit 
faith, whenever that imagined infallible person dictates and demands assent 
without inquiry. 

Sect. 18. Observable in different sects. — Some such wrong and unnatural 
combinations of ideas will be found to establish the irreconcileable opposition 
between different sects of philosophy and religion ; for we cannot imagine 
every one of their followers to impose wilfully on himself, and knowingly re- 
fuse truth offered by plain reason. Interest, though it does a great deal in the 
case, yet cannot be thought to work whole societies of men to so universal a 
perverseness, as that every one of them, to a man, should knowingly maintain 
falsehood : some at least must be allowed to do what all pretend to, i. e. to 
pursue truth sincerely ; and therefore there must be something that blinds their 
understandings and makes them not see the falsehood of what they embrace 
for real truth. That which thus captivates their reasons, and leads men of 
sincerity blindfold from common sense, will, when examined, be found to be 
what we are speaking of; some independent ideas, of no alliance to one 
another, are by education, custom, and the constant din of their party, so 
coupled in their minds, that they always appear there together ; and they can no 
more separate them in their thoughts, than if they were but one idea, and they 
operate as if they were so. This gives sense to jargon, demonstration to ab- 
surdities, and consistency to nonsense, and is the foundation of the greatest, 
I had almost said, of all the errors in the world ; or if it does not reach so 
far, it is at least the most dangerous one, since so far as it obtains, it hinders 
men from seeing and examining. When two things in themselves disjoined ap- 
pear to the sight constantly united ; if the eye sees these things rivetted, Which 
are loose, where will you begin to rectify the mistakes that follow in two ideas ., 
that they have been accustomed so to join in their minds, as to substitute one 
for the other, and, as I am apt to think, often without perceiving it themselves 1 
This, whilst they are under the deceit of it, makes them incapable of con- 
viction, and they applaud themselves as zealous champions for truth, when 
indeed they are contending for error; and the confusion of two different ideas, 
which a customary connexion of them in their minds hath to them made in 
effect but one, fills their heads with false views, and their reasonings with 
false consequences. 

Sect. 19. Conclusion. — Having thus given an account of the original sorts, 
and extent of our ideas, with several other considerations, about these (I know 
not whether I may say) instruments or materials of our knowledge; the 
method I at first proposed to myself would now require, that I should imme- 
diately proceed to show what use the understanding makes of them, and what 
knowledge we have by them. This was that, which, in the first general view 
I had of this subject, was all that I thought I should have to do : but upon a 
nearer approach, I find that there is so close a connexion between ideas and 
words ; and our abstract ideas and general words have so constant a relation 
one to another, that it is impossible to speak clearly and distinctly of our 
Knowledge, which all consists in propositions, without considering, first, the 
nature, use, and signification of language ; which, therefore, must be the 
business of the next book. 



Cfe.1; OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 265 

BOOK III. 

OF WORDS. 

CHAPTER I. 

OF WORDS, OR LANGUAGE IN GENERAL. 

Sect. 1. Man fitted to form articulate sounds. — God having designed man 
for a sociable creature, made him not only with an inclination, and under a 
necessity to have fellowship with those of his own kind, but furnished him 
also with language, which was to be the great instrument and common tie of 
society. Man, therefore, had by nature his organs so fashioned, as to be fit 
to frame articulate sounds, which we call words. But this was not enough 
to produce language ; for parrots, and several other birds, will be taught to 
make articulate sounds distinct enough, which yet, by no means, are capable 
of language. 

Sect. 2. To make them signs of ideas. — Besides articulate sounds, there- 
fore, it was farther necessary that he should be able to use these sounds as 
signs of interna] conceptions ; and to make them stand as marks for the ideas 
within his own mind, whereby they might be made known to others, and the 
thoughts of men's minds be conveyed from one to another. 

Sect. 3. To make general signs. — But neither was this sufficient to make 
words so useful as they ought to be. It is not enough for the perfection of 
language, that sounds can be made signs of ideas, unless those signs can be 
so made use of, as to comprehend several particular things ; for the multipli- 
cation of words would have perplexed their use, had every particular thing 
need of a distinct name to be signified by. To remedy this inconvenience, 
language had yet a farther improvement in the use of general terms, whereby 
one word was made to mark a multitude of particular existences : which ad- 
vantageous use of sounds was obtained only by the difference of the ideas 
they were made signs of; those names becoming general, which are made to 
stand for general ideas, and those remaining particular, where the ideas they 
are used for are particular. 

Sect. 4. Besides these names which stand for ideas, there be other words 
which men make use of, not to signify any idea, but the want or absence of 
some ideas simple or complex, or all ideas together; such as nihil in Latin, 
and in English ignorance and barrenness. All which negative or privitive 
words cannot be said properly to belong to, or signify no ideas : for then they 
would be perfectly insignificant sounds ; but they relate to positive ideas, and 
signify their absence. 

Sect. 5. Words ultimately derived from such as signify sensible ideas. — 
It may also lead us a little towards the original of all our notions and know- 
ledge, if we remark how great a dependence our words have on common sen- 
sible ideas ; and how those, which are made use of to stand for actions and 
notions quite removed from sense, have their rise from thence, and from ob- 
vious sensible ideas are transferred to more abstruse significations, and made 
to stand for ideas that come not under the cognizance of our senses ; v. g. to 
imagine, apprehend, comprehend, adhere, conceive, instil, disgust, disturb- 
ance, tranquillity, &c. are all words taken from the operations of sensible 
things, and applied to certain modes of thinking. Spirit, in its primary sig- 
nification, is breath; angel, a messenger; and I doubt not, but if we could 
trace them to their sources, we should find, in all languages, the names, 
2 I 



266 . OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

which stand for things that fall not under our senses, to have had their first 
rise from sensible ideas. By which we may give some kind of guess, what 
kind of notions they were, and whence derived, which filled their minds, who 
were the first beginners of languages ; and how nature, even in the naming 
of things, unawares suggested to men the originals and principles of all their 
knowledge ; whilst to give names that might make known to others any ope- 
rations they felt in themselves, or any other ideas that come not under their 
senses, they were fain to borrow words from ordinary known ideas of sensa- 
tion, by that means to make others the more easily to conceive those opera- 
tions they experimented in themselves, which made no outward sensible 
appearances : and then when they had got known and agreed names, to signify 
those internal operations of their own minds, they were sufficiently furnished 
to make known by words all their other ideas ; since they could consist of 
nothing, but either of outward sensible perceptions, or of the inward opera- 
tions of their minds about them : we having, as has been proved, no ideas at 
all, but what originally come either from sensible objects without, or what we 
feel within ourselves, from the inward workings of our own spirits, of which 
we are conscious to ourselves within. 

Sect. 6. Distribution. — But to understand better the use and force of lan- 
guage, as subservient to instruction and knowledge, it will be convenient to 
consider, 

First, To what it is that names, in the use of language, are immediately 
applied. 

Secondly, Since all (except proper) names are general, and so stand not 
particularly for this or that single thing, but for sorts and ranks of things, it 
will be necessary to consider, in the next place, what the sorts and kinds, or, 
if you rather like the Latin names, what the species and genera of things are; 
wherein they consist, and how they come to be made. These being (as they 
ought) well looked into, we shall the better come to find the right use of 
words, the natural advantages and defects of language, and the remedies that 
ought to be used, to avoid the inconveniences of obscurity or uncertainty in 
the signification of words, without which it is impossible to discourse with 
any clearness or order concerning knowledge; which being conversant about 
propositions, and those most commonly universal ones, has greater connex- 
ion with words than perhaps is suspected. 

These considerations, therefore, shall be the matter of the following 
chapters. 



CHAPTER II. 

OF THE SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS. 

Sect. 1. Words are sensible signs necessary for communication. — Man, 
though he has great variety of thoughts, and such from which others, as well 
as himself, might receive profit and delight ; yet they are all within his own 
breast, invisible and hidden from others, nor can of themselves be made to 
appear. The comfort and advantage of society not being to be had wifhout 
communication of thoughts, it was necessary that man should find out some 
external sensible signs, whereby those invisible ideas which his thoughts are 
made up of, might be made known to others. For this purpose nothing was 
so fit, either for plenty or quickness, as those articulate sounds, which, with so 
much ease and variety, he found himself able to make. Thus we may con- 
ceive how words which were by nature so well adapted to that purpose, 
come to be made use of by men, as the signs of their ideas ; not by any natu- 
ral connexion that there is between particular articulate sounds, and certain 
ideas, for then there would be but one language among all men: but by a volun- 
tary imposition, whereby such a word is made arbitrarily the mark of such 



Ch. 2. OF THE SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS. 2G7 

an idea. The use then of words is to be sensible marks of ideas; and the 
ideas they stand for are their proper and immediate signification. 

Sect. 2. Words are the sensible signs of his ideas who uses them. — The 
use men have of these marks being either to record their own thoughts for 
the assistance of their own memory, or, as it were, to bring out their ideas, 
and lay them before the view of others ; words in their primary or immediate 
signification stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them, 
how imperfectly soever or carelessly those ideas are collected from the things 
which they are supposed to represent. When a man speaks to another, it 
is that he may be understood ; and the end of speech is, that those sounds, as 
marks, may make known his ideas to the hearer. That then which words 
are the marks of, are the ideas of the speaker : nor can any one apply them 
as marks immediately to any thing else but the ideas that he himself hath. 
For this would be to make them signs of his own conceptions, and yet apply 
them to other ideas ; which would be to make them signs, and not signs of 
his ideas at the same time ; and so, in effect, to have no signification at all. 
Words being voluntary signs, they cannot be voluntary signs imposed by him 
on things he knows not. That would be to make them signs of nothing, 
sounds without signification. A man cannot make his words the signs either 
of qualities in things, or of conceptions in the mind of another, whereof he 
has none in his own. Until he has some ideas of his own, he cannot suppose 
them to correspond with the conceptions of another man ; nor can he use any 
signs for them ; for thus they would be the signs of he knows not what, 
which is, in truth, to be the signs of nothing. But when he represents to him- 
self other men's ideas by some of his own, if he consent to give them the 
same names that other men do, it is still to his own ideas ; to ideas that he 
has, and not to ideas that he has not. 

Sect. 3. This is so necessary in the use of language, that in this respect 
the knowing and the ignorant, the learned and unlearned, use the words they 
speak (with any meaning) all alike. They, in every man's mouth, stand for 
the ideas he has, and which he would express by them. A child having taken 
notice of nothing in the metal he hears called gold, but the bright shining 
yellow colour, he applies the word gold only to his own idea of that colour, 
and nothing else ; and therefore calls the same colour in a peacock's tail, 
gold. Another, that hath better observed, adds to shining yellow great weight; 
and then the sound gold, when he uses it, stands for a complex idea of a shin- 
ing yellow, and very weighty substance. Another adds to those qualities, fu- 
sibility : and then the word gold signifies to him a body, bright, yellow, fusi- 
ble, and very heavy. Another adds malleability. Each of these uses equally 
the word gold, when they have occasion to express the idea which they have 
applied it to ; but it is evident, that each can apply it only to his own idea ; 
nor can he make it stand as a sign of such a complex idea as he has not. 

Sect. 4. Words often secretly referred, first, to the ideas in other men's 
minds. — But though words, as they are used by men, can properly and im- 
mediately signify nothing but the ideas that are in the mind of the speaker ; 
yet they in their thoughts give them a secret reference to two other things. 

First, They suppose their words to be marks of the ideas in the minds also 
of other men, with whom they communicate : for else they should talk in 
vain, and could not be understood, if the sounds they applied to one idea 
were such as by the hearer were applied to another ; which is to speak two 
languages. But in this, men stand not usually to examine whether the idea 
they and those they discourse with have in their minds be the same : but think 
it enough that they use the word, as they imagine, in the common accepta- 
tion of that language ; in which they suppose that the idea they make it a sign 
of is precisely the same, to which the understanding men of that country 
apply that name. 

Sect. 5. Secondly, to the reality of things. — Secondly, Because men 
would not be thought to talk barely of their own imaginations, but of things 
as really they are ; therefore they often suppose their words to stand also for 



268 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3 

the reality of things. But this relating more particularly to substances, and 
their names, as perhaps the former does to simple ideas and modes, we shall 
speak of these two different ways of applying words more at large, when we 
come to treat of the names of mixed modes and substances in particular : 
though give me leave here to say, that it is a perverting the use of words, 
and brings unavoidable obscurity and confusion into their signification, when- 
ever we make them stand for any thing but those ideas we have in our own 
minds. 

Sect. 6. Words by use readily excite ideas. — Concerning words, also, it 
is farther to be considered : first, that they being immediately the signs of 
men's ideas ; and by that means the instruments whereby men communicate 
their conceptions, and express to one another those thoughts and imagina- 
tions they have within their own breasts ; there comes by constant use to be 
such a connexion between certain sounds and the ideas they stand for, that 
the names heard almost as readily excite certain ideas, as if the objects them- 
selves, which are apt to produce them, did actually affect the senses. Which 
is manifestly so in all obvious sensible qualities, and in all substances that 
frequently and familiarly occur to us. 

Sect. 7. Words often used without signification. — Secondly, That though 
the proper and immediate signification of words are ideas in the mind of the 
speaker, yet because by familiar use from our cradles we come to learn certain 
articulate sounds very perfectly, and have them readily on our tongues, and 
always at hand in our memories, but yet are not always careful to examine or 
settle their significations perfectly; it often happens that men, even when 
they would apply themselves to an attentive consideration, do set their 
thoughts more on words than things. Nay, because words are many of them 
learned before the ideas are known for which they stand; therefore some, not 
only children, but men, speak several words no otherwise than parrots do, only 
because they have learned them, and have been accustomed to those sounds. 
But so far as words are of use and signification, so far is there a constant 
connexion between the sound and the idea, and a designation that the one 
stands for the other; without which application of them, they are nothing but 
so much insignificant noise. 

Sect. 8. Their signification perfectly arbitrary. — Words, by v; long and 
familiar use, as has been said, come to excite in men certain ideas so con- 
stantly and readily, that they are apt to suppose a natural connexion be- 
tween them. But that they signify only men's peculiar ideas, and that by 
a perfect arbitrary imposition, is evident, in that they often fail to excite in 
others (even that use the same language) the same ideas we take them to be 
the signs of; and every man has so inviolable a liberty to make words stand for 
what ideas he pleases, that no one hath the power to make others have the 
same ideas in their minds that he has, when they use the same words that he 
does. And therefore the great Augustus himself, in the possession of that 
power which ruled the world, acknowledged he could not make a new Latin 
word; which was as much as to say, that he could not arbitrarily appoint 
what idea any sound should be a sign of in the mouths and common language 
of his subjects. It is true, common use, by a tacit consent, appropriates cer- 
tain sounds to certain ideas in all languages, which so far limits the signifi- 
cation of that sound, that unless a man applies it to the same idea, he does 
not speak properly : and let me add, that unless a man's words excite the 
same ideas in the hearer which he makes them stand for in speaking, he does 
not speak intelligibly. But whatever be the consequence of any man's 
using of words differently, either from their general meaning, or the particu- 
lar sense of the person to whom he addresses them, this is certain their sig- 
nification, in his use of them, is limited to his ideas, and they can be signs o« 
nothing else. 



Ch. 3. GENERAL TERMS. 269 

CHAPTER III. 

OF GENERAL TERMS. 

Sect. 1. The greatest part of words general. — All things that exist being 
particulars, it may perhaps be thought reasonable that words, which ought to 
be conformed to things, should be so too ; I mean in their signification : but 
yet we find the quite contrary. The far greatest part of words, that make 
all languages, are general terms ; which has not been the effect of neglect or 
chance, but of reason and necessity. 

Sect. 2. For every particular thing to have a name is impossible. — First, 
It is impossible that every particular thing should have a distinct peculiar 
name. For the signification and use of words, depending on that connexion 
which the mind makes between its ideas, and the sounds it uses as signs of 
them, it is necessary, in the application of names to things, that the mind 
should have distinct ideas of the things, and retain also the particular name 
that belongs to every one, with its peculiar appropriation to that idea. But 
it is beyond the power of human capacity to frame and retain distinct ideas 
of all the particular things we meet with ; every bird and beast men saw, 
every tree and plant that affected the senses could not find a place in the 
most capacious understanding. If it be looked on as an instance of a prodi- 
gious memory, that some generals have been able to call every soldier in their 
army by his proper name, we may easily find a reason why men have never 
attempted to give names to each sheep in their flock, or crow that flies over 
their head; much less to call every leaf of plants, or grain of sand that came 
in their way, by a peculiar name. 

Sect. 3. And useless. — Secondly, If it were possible, it would yet be use- 
less ; because it would not serve to the chief end of language. Men would 
in vain heap up names of particular things that would not serve them to com- 
municate their thoughts. Men learn names, and use them in talk with 
others, only that they may be understood ; which is then only done, when by 
use or consent the sound I make by the organs of speech excites in another 
man's mind, who hears it, the idea I apply it to in mine, when I speak it. This 
cannot be done by names applied to particular things, whereof I alone having 
the ideas in my mind, the names of them could not be significant or intelli- 
gible to another who was not acquainted with all those very particular things 
which had fallen under my notice. 

Sect. 4. Thirdly, But yet granting this also feasible (which I think is 
not), yet a distinct name for every particular thing would not be of any great 
use for the improvement of knowledge ; which, though founded in particular 
things, enlarges itself by general views ; to which things reduced, into sorts 
under general names, are properly subservient. These, with the names be- 
longing to them, come within some compass, and do not multiply every mo- 
ment, beyond what either the mind can contain, or use requires : and there- 
fore, in these, men have for the most part stopped ; but yet not so as to hin- 
der themselves from distinguishing particular things by appropriated names, 
where convenience demands it. And therefore in their own species, which 
they have most to do with, and wherein they have often occasion to mention 
particular persons, they make use of proper names ; and their distinct indi- 
viduals have distinct denominations. 

Sect. 5. What things have proper names. — Besides persons, countries 
also, cities, rivers, mountains, and other the like distinctions of place, have 
usually found peculiar names, and that for the same reason ; they being such 
as men have often an occasion to mark particularly, and, as it were, set be- 
fore others in their discourses with them. And I doubt not, but if we had 
reason to mention particular horses, as often as we have to mention particu- 



270 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

jar men, we should have proper names for the one as familiar as for the other; 
and Bucephalus would be a word as much in use as Alexander. And there- 
fore we see that, among jockies, horses have their proper names to be known 
and distinguished by as commonly as their servants ; because, among them, 
there is often occasion to mention this or that particular horse, when he is oat 
of sight. 

Sect. 6. How general words are made. — The next thing to be considered is, 
how general words come to be made. For since all things that exist are only 
particulars, how come we by general terms, or where find we those general 
natures they are supposed to stand for 1 ? Words become general, by being 
made the signs of general ideas ; and ideas become general, by separating 
from them the circumstances of time, and place, and any other ideas, that 
may determine them to this or that particular existence. By this way of ab- 
straction, they are made capable of representing more individuals than one ; 
each of which having in it a conformity to that abstract idea, is (as we call 
it) of that sort. 

Sect. 7. But to deduce this a little more distinctly, it will not perhaps 
be amiss to trace our notions and names from their beginning, and ob- 
serve by what degrees we proceed, and by what steps we enlarge our 
ideas from our first infancy. There is nothing more evident, than that the 
ideas of the persons children converse with (to instance in them alone) are 
like the persons themselves, only particular. The ideas of the nurse and the 
mother are well framed in their minds ; and, like pictures of them there, re- 
present only those individuals. The names they first gave to them are con- 
fined to these individuals ; and the names of nurse and mamma the child uses, 
determine themselves to those persons. Afterwards, when time and a larger 
acquaintance have made them observe, that there are a great many other 
things in the world, that in some common agreements of shape, and several 
other qualities, resemble their father and mother, and those persons they have 
been used to, they frame an idea, which they find those many particulars do 
partake in ; and to that they give, with others, the name man for example. 
And thus they come to have a general name, and a general idea. Wherein 
they make nothing new, but only leave out the complex idea they had of 
Peter and James, Mary and Jane, that which is peculiar to each, and retain 
only what is common to them all. 

Sect. 8. By the same way that they come by the general name and idea 
of man, they easily advance to more general names and notions. For ob- 
serving that several things that differ from their idea of man, and cannot 
therefore be comprehended under that name, have yet certain qualities, where- 
in they agree with man, by retaining only those qualities, and uniting them 
into one idea, they have again another and more general idea ; to which hav- 
ing given a name, they make a term of a more comprehensive extension: 
which new idea is made, not by any new addition, but only, as before, by 
leaving out the shape, and some other properties signified by the name man, 
and retaining only a body, with life, sense, and spontaneous motion, com- 
prehended under the name animal. 

Sect. 9. General natures are nothing but abstract ideas. — That this is 
the way whereby men first formed general ideas, and general names to them, 
I think, is so evident, that there needs no other proof of it, but the consider- 
ing of a man's self, or others, and the ordinary proceedings of their minds in 
knowledge : and he that thinks general natures or notions are any thing else 
but such abstract and partial ideas of more complex ones, taken at first from 
particular existences, will, I fear, be at a loss where to find them. For let 
any one reflect, and then tell me, wherein does his idea of man differ from 
that of Peter and Paul ; or his idea of horse from that of Bucephalus, but in 
the leaving out something that is peculiar to each individual, and retaining so 
much of those particular complex ideas of several particular existences as 
they are found to agree in? Of the complex ideas signified by the names 
man and horse, leaving out but those particulars wherein they differ, and n>> 



Ch. 3. GENERAL TERMS, 271 

taming only those wherein they agree, and of those making a new distinct 
complex idea, and giving the name animal to it ; one has a more general 
term, that comprehends with man several other creatures. Leave out of the 
idea of animal, sense and spontaneous motion ; and the remaining complex 
idea, made up of the remaining simple ones of body, life and nourishment, 
becomes a more general one, under the more comprehensive term vivens. 
And not to dwell longer upon this particular, so evident in itself, by the same 
way the mind proceeds to body, substance, and at last to being, thing, and 
such universal terms, which stand for any of our ideas whatsoever. To con- 
clude, this whole mystery of genera and species, which make such a noise in 
the schools, and are with justice so little regarded out of them, is nothing 
else but abstract ideas, more or less comprehensive, with names annexed to 
them. In all which this is constant and unvariable, that every more general 
term stands for such an idea, as is but a part of any of those contained 
under it. 

Sect. 10. Why the genus is ordinarily made use of in definitions. — This 
may show us the reason why, in the defining of words, which is nothing but 
declaring their significations, we make use of the genus, or next general 
word that comprehends it. Which is not out of necessity, but only to save 
the labour of enumerating the several simple ideas, which the next general 
word or genus stands for ; or, perhaps, sometimes the shame of not being 
able to do it. But though defining by genus and differentia (I crave leave 
to use these terms of art, though originally Latin, since they most properly 
suit those notions they are applied to) I say, though defining by the genus 
be the shortest way, yet I think it may be doubted whether it be the best. 
This I am sure, it is not the only, and so not absolutely necessary. For de- 
finition being nothing but making another understand by words what idea the 
term defined stands for, a definition is best made by enumerating those 
simple ideas that are combined in the signification of the term defined ; and 
if instead of such an enumeration men have accustomed themselves to use 
the next general term, it has not been out of necessity, or for greater clear- 
ness, but for quickness and despatch sake. For, I think, that to one who de- 
sired to know what idea the word man stood for, it should be said, that man 
was a solid extended substance, having life, sense, spontaneous motion, and 
the faculty of reasoning ; I doubt not but the meaning of the term man would 
be as well understood, and the idea it stands for be at least as clearly made 
known, as when it is defined to be a rational animal : which, by the several 
definitions of animal, vivens, and corpus, resolves itself into those enumer- 
ated ideas. I have, in explaining the term man, followed here the ordinary 
definition of the schools: which though, perhaps, not the most exact, yet 
serves well enough to my present purpose. And one may, in this instance, 
see what gave occasion to the rule, that a definition must consist of genus 
and differentia; and it suffices to show us the little necessity there is of such 
a rule, or advantage in the strict observing of it. For definitions, as has been 
said, being only the explaining of one word by several others, so that the 
meaning or idea it stands for may be certainly known ; languages are not al- 
ways so made according to the rules of logic, that every term can have its 
signification exactly and clearly expressed by two others. Experience suffi- 
ciently satisfies us to the contrary; or else those who have made this rule 
have done ill, that they have given us so few definitions conformable to it. 
But of definitions, more in the next chapter. 

Sect. 11. General and universal are creatures of the understanding. — 
To return to general words, it is plain by what has been said, that general 
and universal belong not to the real existence of things ; but are the inven- 
tions and creatures of the understanding, made by it, for its own use, and 
concern only signs, whether words or ideas. Words are general, as has been 
said, when used for signs of general ideas, and so are applicable indifferently 
to many particular things : and ideas are general, when they are set up as the 
representatives of many particular things ; but universality belongs not to 
things themselves, which are all of them particular in their existence ; even 



272 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book S. 

those words and ideas which in their signification are general. When there- 
fore we quit particulars, the generals that rest are only creatures, of our own 
making ; their general nature being nothing but the capacity they are put 
into by the understanding, of signifying or representing many particulars. 
For the signification they have is nothing but a relation, that by the mind of 
man is added to them(l). 

(1) Against this the Bishop of Worcester objects, and our author* answers as fol- 
loweth : "However," saith the bishop, "the abstracted ideas are the work of the 
mind, yet they are not mere creatures of the mind ; as appears by an instance pro- 
duced of the essence of the sun being in one single individual ; in which case it is grant- 
ed, that the idea may be so abstracted, that more suns might agree in it, and it is as 
much a sort, as if there were as many suns as there are stars. So that here we have 
a real essence subsisting in one individual, but capable of being multiplied into 
more, and the same essence remaining. But in this one sun there is a real essence, 
and not a mere nominal or abstracted essence : but suppose there were more suns, 
would not each of them have the real essence of the sun ? For what is it makes 
the second sun, but having the same real essence with the first ? If it were but a 
nominal essence, then the second would have nothing but the name." 

This, as I understand it, replies Mr Locke, is to prove that the abstract general 
essence of any sort of things, or things of the same denomination, v. g. of man or 
marigold, hath a real being out of the understanding ; which, I confess, I am not able 
to conceive. Your lordship's proof here, brought out of my essay, concerning the 
sun, I humbly conceive will not reach it ; because what is said there, does not at all 
concern the real but nominal essence, as is evident from hence, that the idea I 
speak of there is a complex idea ; but we have no complex idea of the internal con- 
stitution or real essence of the sun. Besides, I say expressly, that our distinguish- 
ing substances into species, by names, is not at all founded on their real essences. 
So that the sun being one of these substances, I cannot, in the place quoted by 
your lordship, be supposed to mean by essence of the sun the real essence of the 
sun, unless I had so expressed it. But all this argument will be at an end, when 
your lordship shall have explained what you mean by these words, "tree sun." In 
my sense of them, any thing will be a true sun, to which the name sun may be truly 
and properly applied, and to that substance or thing the name sun may be truly and 
properly applied, which has united in it that combination of sensible qualities, by 
which any thing else, that is called sun, is distinguished from other substances, i. e, 
by the nominal essence : and thus our sun is denominated and distinguished from a 
fixed star, not by a real essence that we do not know (for if we did, it is possible 
we should find the real essence or constitution of one of the fixed stars to be the 
same with that of our sun) but by a complex idea of sensible qualities coexisting, 
which, wherever they are found, make a true sun. And thus I crave leave to an- 
swer your lordship's question — "For what is it makes the second sun to be a true 
sun, but having the same real essence with the first ? If it were but a nominal es- 
sence, then the second would have nothing but the name." 

I humbly conceive, if it had the nominal essence, it would have something besides 
the name, viz. that nominal essence, which is sufficient to denominate it truly a sun, 
or to make it be a true sun, though we know nothing of that real essence whereon 
that nominal one depends. Your lordship will then argue, that that real essence is 
in the second sun, and makes the second sun. I grant it, Avhen the second sun 
comes to exist, so as to be perceived by us to have all the ideas contained in our 
complex idea, i. e. in our nominal essence of a sun. For should it be true (as is 
now believed by astronomers), that the real essence of the sun were in any of tho 
fixed stars, yet such a star could not for that be by us called a sun, whilst it an- 
swers not our complex idea, or nominal essence of a sun. But how far that will 
prove that the essences of things, as they are knowable by us, have a reality in 
them distinct from that of abstract ideas in the mind, which are merely creatures 
of the mind, I do not see ; and we shall farther inquire, in considering your lord- 
ship's following words. "Therefore," say you, "there must be a real essence in 
every individual of the same kind." Yes, and I beg leave of your lordship to savj, 
of a different kind too. For that alone is it which makes it to be what it is. 

* In his first letter. 



Ch. 3. GENERAL TERMS. 273 

Sect. 12. Abstract ideas are the essences of the genera and species. — 
The next thing therefore to be considered is, what kind of signification it is 
that general words have. For, as it is evident that they do not signify barely 
one particular thing ; for then they would not be general terms, but proper 
names ; so on the other side it is as evident, they do not signify a plurality ; 
for man and men would then signify the same, and the distinction of numbers 

That every individual substance has real, internal, individual constitution, i. e. a 
real essence, that makes it to be what it is, I readily grant. Upon this your lord- 
ship says, "Peter, James, and John, are all true and real men." Answer. With 
nut doubt, supposing them to be men, they are true and real men, i. e. supposing 
the name of that species belongs to them. And so three bobaques are all true 
and real bobaques, supposing the name of that species of animals belongs to them. 

For I beseech your lordship to consider, whether in your way of argument, by 
naming them Peter, James, and John, names familiar to us, as appropriated to in- 
dividuals of the species man, your lordship does not first suppose them men, and 
then very safely ask, whether they be not all true and real men ? But if I should 
ask your lordship whether Wevveena, Chuckery, and Cousheda, were true and rejal 
men or no ? your lordship would not be able to tell me, till, I having pointed out to 
your lordship the individuals called by those names, your lordship, by examining 
whether they had in them those sensible qualities which your lordship has combined 
into that complex idea to which you give the specific name man, determined them 
all, or some of them, to be the species which you call man, and so to be true anc' 
real men ; which, when your lordship has determined, it is plain you did it by that 
which is only the nominal essence, as not knowing the real one. But your lord- 
ship farther asks, "what is it makes Peter, James, and John real men ? Is it the 
attributing the general name to them ^ No, certainly ; but that the true and real 
essence of a man is in every one of them." 

If, when your lordship asks, "What makes them men?" your lordship used the 
word making in the proper sense for the efficient cause, and in that sense it were 
true, that the essence of a man, i. e. the specific essence of that species made a 
man; it would undoubtedly follow, that this specific essence had a reality beyond 
that of being only a general abstract idea in the mind. But when it is said, that 
it is the true and real essence of a man in eveiy one of them, that makes Peter, 
James, and John true and real men, the true and real meaning of these words is 
no more, but that the essence of that species, i. e. the properties answering the 
complex abstract idea to which the specific name is given, being found in them, 
that makes them to be properly and truly called men, or is the reason why they 
are called men. Your lordship adds, "And we must be as certain of this, as we 
are that they are men." 

How, I beseech your lordship, are we certain that they are men, but only by 
our senses, finding those properties in them which answer the abstract complex 
idea, which is in our minds, of the specific idea to which we have annexed the 
specific name man/ This I take to be the true meaning of what your lordship 
says in the next words, viz. " They take their denomination of being men from 
that common nature or essence which is in them;" and I am apt to think these 
words will not hold true in any other sense. 

Your lordship's fourth inference begins thus — " That the general idea is not 
made from the simple ideas by the mere act of the mind abstracting from circum- 
stances, but from reason and consideration of the nature of things. " 

I thought, my lord, that reason and consideration had been acts of the mind, 
mere acts of the mind, when any thing was done ^y them. Your lordship gives a 
reason for it, viz. "For, when we see several individuals that have the same 
powers and properties, we thence infer, that there must be something common to 
all, which makes them of one kind." 

I grant the inference to be true; but must beg leave to deny that this proves, that 
the general idea the name is annexed to, is not made by the mind. I have said > 
and it agrees with what your lordship here says, *That "the mind, in making i'a 
complex ideas of substances, only follows nature, and puts no ideas together wl i 

* B. 3, c. 6. §. 28, 29. 
2K 



274 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3 

(as the grammarians call them) would be superfluous and useless. That then 
which general words signify is a sort of things ; and each of them does thatby 
being a sign of an abstract idea in the mind, to which idea, as things existing 
are found to agree, so they come to be ranked under that name ; or, which is 
all one, be of that sort. Whereby, it is evident that the essences of the sorts, 
or (if the Latin word pleases better) species of things, are nothing else but 

are not supposed to have a union in nature. Nobody joins the voice of a sheep 
with the shape of a horse; nor the colour of lead with the weight and fixedness of 
gold, to be the complex ideas of any real substances; unless he has a mind to fill 
his head with chimeras, and his discourses with unintelligible words. Men ob- 
serving certain qualities always joined and existing together, therein copied nature, 
and of ideas so united, made their complex ones of substance," &c. Which is very 
little different from what your lordship here says, that it is from our observation 
of individuals, that we come to infer, "that there is something common to them 
all." But I do not see how it will thence follow, that the general or specific idea 
is not made by the mere act of the mind. "No," says your lordship, "there is 
something common to them all, which makes them of one kind; and if the differ- 
ence of kinds be real, that which makes them all of one kind must not be a nomi- 
nal, but real essence." 

This maybe some objection to the name of nominal essence; but is, as I humbly 
conceive, none to the thing designed by it. There is an internal constitution of 
things, on which their properties depend. This your lordship and I are agreed 
of, and this we call the real essence. There are also certain complex ideas, or 
combinations of these properties in men's minds, to which they commonly annex 
specific names, or names of sorts or kinds ofthings. This, I believe, your lordship 
does not deny. These complex ideas, for want of a better name, I have called 
nominal essences; how properly, I will not dispute. But if any one will help me 
to a better name for them, I am ready to receive it; till then, I must, to express 
myself, use this. Now, my lord, body, life, and the power of reasoning, being 
not the real essence of a man, as I believe your lordship will agree, will your 
lordship say that they are not enough to make the thing wherein they are found, 
of the kind called man, and not of the kind called baboon, because the difference 
of these kinds is real? If this be not real enough to make the thing of one kind 
and not of another, I do not see how animal rationale can be enough really to dis- 
tinguish a man from a horse; for that is but the nominal, not real essence of that 
kind, designed by the name man; and yet I suppose every one thinks it real enough 
to make a real difference between that and other kinds. And if nothing will serve 
the turn, to make things of one kind, and not of another, (which, as 1 have showed, 
signifies no more but ranking of them under different specific names) but their real 
unknown constitutions, which are the real essences we are speaking of, I fear it 
Mould be a long while before we should have really different kind of substances, or 
distinct names lor them, unless we could distinguish them by these differences, of 
which we have no distinct conceptions. For I think it would not be readily an- 
swered me, if I should demand, wherein lies the real difference in the internal 
constitution of a stag from that of a buck, which are each of them very well known 
to be of one kind, and not of the other; and nobody questions but that the kinds, 
whereof each of them is, are really different. 

Your lordship farther says, "And this difference doth not depend upon the 
complex ideas of substances, whereby men arbitrarily join modes together in their 
minds." I confess, my lord, T know not what to say to this, because I do not know 
what these complex ideas of substances are, whereby men arbitrarily join modes 
together in their minds. But I am apt to think there is a mistake in the matter, 
by the words that follow, which are these: "For let them mistake in their com- 
plication of ideas, either in leaving out or putting in what doth not belong to them; 
and let their ideas be what they please, the real essence of a man, and a horse, and 
a tree, are just what they were." 

The mistake I spoke of, I humbly suppose is this, that things are here taken to 
be distinguished by their real essences; when, by the very way of speaking of 
them, it is clef r, that they are already distinguished by their nominal essences, and 
are so taken tc be. For what, I beseech your lordship, does your lordship mean, 



Ch.fc. GENERAL TERMS. 275 

these abstract ideas. For the having the essence of any species being that 
which makes any thing to be of that species, and the conformity to the idea 
to which the name is annexed being that which gives a right to that name : 
the having the essence, and the having that conformity, must needs be the 
same thing; since to be of any species, and to have a right to the name of 
that species, is all one. As, for example, to be a man, or of the species man, 

when you say, " the real essence of a man, and a horse, and a tree," but that there 
are such kinds already set out hy the signification of these names, man, horse, tree ? 
And what, I beseech your lordship, is the signification of each of these specific 
names, but the complex idea it stands for? And that complex idea is the nominal 
essence, and nothing else. So that taking man, as your lordship does here, to 
stand for a kind or sort of individuals, all which agree in that common complex 
idea, which that specific name stands for, it is certain that the real essence of all 
the individuals comprehended under the specific name man, in your use of it, 
would be just the same; let others leave out or put into their complex idea of man 
what they please; because the real essence on which that unaltered complex idea, 
i. e. those properties depend, must necessarily be concluded to be the same. 

For I take it for granted, that in using the name man, in this place, your lord- 
ship uses it for that complex idea which is in your lordship's mind of that species. 
So that your lordship, by putting it for, or substituting it in, the place of that com- 
plex idea where you say the real essence of it is just as it was, or the very same as 
it was, does suppose the idea it stands for to be steadily the same. For, if I change 
the signification of the word man, whereby it may not comprehend just the same 
individuals which in your lordship's sense it does, but shut out some of those that 
to your lordship are men in your signification of the word man, or take in others to 
which your lordship does not allow the name man ; I do not think you will say, that 
the real essence of man in both these senses is the same. And yet your lordship 
seems to say so, when you say, "Let men mistake in the complication of their ideas, 
either in leaving out or putting in what doth not belong to them ;" and let their 
ideas be what they please, the real essence of the individuals comprehended under 
the names annexed to these ideas will be the same : for so, I humbly conceive, it 
must be put, to make out what your lordship aims at. For, as your lordship puts 
it by the name of man, or any other specific name, your lordship seems to me to 
suppose, that that name stands for, and not for, the same idea, at the same time. 

For example, my lord, let your lordship's idea, to which you annex the sign man, 
be a rational animal : let another man's idea be a rational animal of such a shape ; 
let a third man's idea be of an animal of such a size and shape, leaving out ration- 
ality ; let a fourth's be an animal with a body of such a shape, and an immaterial 
substance, with a power of reasoning ; let a fifth leave out of his idea an immaterial 
substance. It is plain every one of these will call his a man, as well as your lord- 
ship ; and yet it is as plain that men, as standing for all these distinct, complex 
ideas, cannot be supposed to have the same internal constitution, i. e. the same real 
essence. The truth is, every distinct abstract idea with the name to it, makes a 
real distinct kind, whatever the real essence (which we know not of any of them) be. 

And therefore I grant it true what your lordship says in the next words, " and let 
the nominal essences differ ever so much, the real common essences or nature of 
the several kinds are not at all altered by them," i. e. that our thoughts or ideas 
cannot alter the real constitutions that are in things that exist, there is nothing more 
certain. But yet it is true, that the change of ideas, to which we annex them, can 
and does alter the signification of their names, and thereby alter the kinds, which 
by these names we rank and sort them into. Your lordship farther adds, "and 
these real essences are unchangeable," i. e. the internal constitutions are unchangea- 
ble. Of what, I beseech your lordship, are the internal constitutions unchangeable ? 
Not of any thing that exists, but of God alone ; for they may be changed all as easih 
by that hand that made them, as the internal frame of a watch. What then is it 
that is unchangeable ? The internal constitution, or real essence of a species ; 
which in plain English, is no more but this, whilst the same specific name, v. g. of 
man, horse, or tree, is annexed to, or made the sign of the same abstract complex 
idea, under which I rank several individuals $ it is impossible but the real consti- 
tution on which th<it unaltered, complex idea, or nominal essence denends. must be; 



276 OP HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3 

and to have a right to the name man, is the same thing-. Again, to be a man 
or of the species man, and have the essence of a man, is the same thing 
Now since nothing can be a man, or have a right to the name man, but what 
has a conformity to the abstract idea the name man stands for ; nor any thing 
be a man, or have a right to the species man, but what has the essence of 
that species : it follows that the abstract idea for which the name stands, and 
the essence of the species is one and the same. From whence it is easy to 
observe, that the essences of the sorts of things, and consequently the sort- 
ing of this, is the workmanship of the understanding, that abstracts and makes 
those general ideas. 

Sect. 13. They are the workmanship of the understanding, but have 
their foundation in the similitude of things. — I would not here be thought 
to forget, much less to deny, that nature in the production of things makes 
several of them alike ; there is nothing more obvious, especially in the races 
of animals and all things propagated by seed. But yet, I think, we may say 
the sorting of them under names is the workmanship of the understanding,, 
taking occasion from the similitude it observes among them to make abstract 
general ideas, and set them up in the mind, with names annexed to them, as 
patterns or forms (for in that sense the word form has a very proper signifi- 
cation), to which as particular things existing- are found to agree, so they 
come to be of that species, have that denomination, or are put into that clas- 
sis. For when we say, this is a man, that a horse ; this justice, that cruelty; 
this a watch, tiiat a jack ; what do we else but rank things under different 
specific names, as agreeing to those abstract ideas, of which we have made 
those names the signs'? And what are the essences of those species, set out 
and marked by names, but those abstract ideas in the mind ; which are, as it 
were, the bonds between particular things that exist, and the names they are 
to be ranked under] And when general names have any connexion with 
particular beings, these abstract ideas are the medium that unites them ; so 
that the essences of species, as distinguished and denominated by us, neither 
are, nor can be any thing, but those precise abstract ideals we have in our 
minds. And therefore the supposed real essences of substances, if different 
from our abstract ideas, cannot be the essences of the species we rank things 
into. For two species may be one as rationally as two different essences 
be the essence of one species : and I demand what are the alterations may, or 
may not, be in a horse or lead, without making either of them to be of another 
species'? Tn determining the species of things by our abstract ideas, this is 
easy to resolve : but if any one will regulate himself herein by supposed real 
essences, he will, I suppose, be at a loss ; and he will never be able to know 
when any thing precisely ceases to be of the species of a horse or lead. 

Sect. 14. Each distinct abstract idea is a distinct essence. — Nor will any 
one wonder that I say these essences, or abstract ideas (which are the mea- 
sures of name, and the boundaries of species,) are the workmanship of the 
understanding, who considers, that at least the complex ones are often r in- 
several men, different collections of simple ideas ; and therefore that is covet- 
ousness to one man, which is not so to another. Nay, even in substances, 

the same, i. e. in other words, where we find all the same properties, we have rea- 
son to conclude there is the same real, internal constitution from which those pro-s. 
perties flow. 

But your lordship proves the real essences to he unchangeable, because God 
makes them, in these following words : " for, however there may happen some va- 
riety in individuals by particular accidents, yet the essences of men, and horses, 
and trees, remain always the same : because they do not depend on the ideas of 
men, but on the will of the Creator, who hath made several sorts of beings. " 

It is true, the real constitutions or essences of particular things existing do not 
depend on the ideas of men, but on the will of the Creator : but their being ranked 
into sorts, under such and such names, does depend, and wholly depend, on the 
ideas of men. 



Ch. 3. GENERAL TERMS. 277 

where their abstract ideas seem to be taken from the things themselves, they 
are not constantly the same ; no, not in that species which is most familiar to 
us, and with which we have the most intimate acquaintance ; it having been 
more than once doubted, whether the fetus born of a woman were a man ; 
even so far, as that it hath been debated, whether it were, or were not to be 
nourished and baptized ; which could not be, if the abstract idea or essence, to 
which the name man belonged, were of nature's making, and were not the 
uncertain and various collection of simple ideas, which the understanding puts 
together, and then abstracting it, affixed a name to it. So that in truth every 
distinct abstract idea is a distinct essence : and the names that stand for such 
distinct ideas are the names of things essentially different. Thus a circle is 
as essentially different from an oval, as a sheep from a goat ; and rain is as 
essentially different from snow, as water from earth ; the abstract idea which 
is the essence of one being impossible to be communicated to the other. And 
thus any two abstract ideas, that in any part vary one from another, with two 
distinct names annexed to them, constitute two distinct sorts, or, if you 
please, species, as essentially different, as any two of the most remote or 
opposite in the world. 

Sect. 15. Real and nominal essences. — -But since the essences of things 
are thought by. some (and not without reason) to be wholly unknown, it may 
not be amiss to consider the several significations of the word essence. 

First, essence may be taken for the being of any thing, whereby it is what 
it is. And thus the real internal, but generally, in substances, unknown con- 
stitution of things, whereon their discoverable qualities depend, may be called 
their essence. This is the proper original signification of the word, as is 
evident from the formation of it ; essentia, in its primary notation, signifying 
properly being. And in this sense it is still used, when we speak of the es- 
sence of particular things, without giving them any name. 

Secondly, the learning and disputes of the schools having been much busied 
about genus and species, the word essence has almost lost its primary signi- 
fication ; and instead of the real constitution of things, has been almost 
wholly applied to the artificial constitution of genus and species. It is true, 
there is ordinarily supposed a real constitution of the sorts of things; and it is 
past doubt, there must be some real constitution, on which any collection of 
simple ideas coexisting must depend. But it being evident that things are 
ranked under names into sorts or species, only as they agree to certain ab- 
stract ideas to which we have annexed those names, the essence of each ge- 
nus or sort comes to be nothing but that abstract idea, which the general or 
sortal (if I may have leave so to call it from sort, as I do general from genus) 
name stands for. And this we shall find to be that which the word essence 
imports in its most familiar use. These two sorts of essences, I suppose, 
may not unfitly be termed, the one the real, the other the nominal essence. 

Sect. 16. Constant connexion between the name and nominal essence. — 
Between the nominal essence and the name there is so near a connexion, 
that the name of any sort of things cannot be attributed to any particular be- 
ing but what has this essence, whereby it answers that abstract idea, whereof 
that name is the sign. 

Sect. 17. Supposition, that species are distinguished by their real essen- 
ces, useless. — Concerning the real essences of corporeal substances (to men- 
tion these only), there are, if I mistake not, two opinions. The one is of 
those who, using the word essence for they know not what, suppose a cer- 
tain number of those essences, according to which all natural things are made, 
and wherein they do exactly every one of them partake, and so become of 
this or that species. The other and more rational opinion is, of those who 
look on all natural things to have a real, but unknown constitution of their 
insensible parts ; from which flow those sensible qualities which serve us to 
distinguish them one from another, according as we have occasion to rank 
them into sorts under common denominations. The former of these opin- 
ions, which supposes these essences as a certain number of forms or moulds, 



278 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

wherein all natural things that exist are cast and do equally partake, has, I 
imagine, very much perplexed the knowledge of natural things. The 
frequent productions of monsters, in all the species of animals, and oi 
changelings and other strange issues of human birth, carry with them diffi- 
culties not possible to consist with this hypothesis : since it is as impossible 
that two things, partaking exactly of the same real essence, should have 
different properties, as that two figures partaking of the same real essence o> 
a circle should have different properties. T it were there no other reason 
against it, yet the supposition of essences hat cannot be known, and the 
making of them nevertheless to be that which distinguishes the species oi 
things, is so wholly useless and unserviceable to any part of our knowledge, 
that that alone were sufficient to make us lay it by, and content ourselves 
with such essences of the sorts or species of things, as come within the reach 
of our knowledge ; which, when seriously considered, will be found, as I 
have said, to be nothing else but those abstract complex ideas to which we 
have annexed distinct general names. 

Sect. 18. Real and nominal essence the same in simple ideas and modes, 
different in substances. — Essences being thus distinguished into nominal and 
real, we may farther observe, that in the species of simple ideas and modes, 
they are always the same, but in substances, always quite different. Thus 
a figure, including a space between three lines, is the real as well as nominal 
essence of a triangle ; it being not only the abstract idea to which the general 
name is annexed, but the very essentia or being of the thing itself, that 
foundation from which all its properties flow, and to which they are all in- 
separably annexed. But it is far otherwise concerning that parcel of matter 
which makes the ring on my finger, wherein these two essences are apparently 
different. For it is the real constitution of its insensible parts, on which de- 
pend all those properties of colour, weight, fusibility, fixedness, &c. which are 
to be found in it, which constitution we know not, and so having no 
particular idea of, have no name that is the sign of it. But yet it is its colour, 
weight, fusibility, fixedness, &c. which makes it to be gold, or gives it a right 
to that name, which is therefore its nominal essence ; since nothing can be 
called gold, but what has a conformity of qualities to that abstract complex 
idea to which that name is annexed. But this distinction of essences be- 
longing particularly to substances, we shall, when we come to consider their 
names, have an occasion to treat of more fully. 

Sect. 19. Essences ingenerable and incorruptible. — That such abstract 
ideas, with names to them, as we have been speaking of, are essences, may 
farther appear by what we are told concerning essences, viz. that they are ail 
ingenerable and incorruptible : which cannot be true of the real constitutions 
of things, which begin and perish with them. All things that exist, besides 
their author, are all liable to change ; especially those things we are ac- 
quainted with, and have ranked into bands under distinct names or ensigns. 
Thus that which was grass to-day is to-morrow the flesh of a sheep, and with- 
in a few days after becomes part of a man : in all which, and the like 
changes, it is evident their real essence, i. e. that constitution, whereon the 
properties of these several things depended, is destroyed, and perishes with 
them. But essences being taken for ideas, established in the mind, with 
names annexed to them, they are supposed to remain steadily the same, 
whatever mutations the particular substances are liable to. For whatever 
becomes of Alexander and Bucephalus, the ideas to which man and horse are 
annexed are supposed nevertheless to remain the same ; and so the essences 
of those species are preserved whole and undestroyed, whatever changes 
happen to any or all of the individuals of those species. By this means, the 
essence of a species rests safe and entire, without the existence of so much 
as one individual of that kind. For were there now no circle existing any 
where in the world (as perhaps that figure exists not any where exactly 
marked out), yet the idea annexed to that name would not cease to be what 
it is; nor cease to be as a pattern to determine which of the particular figures 



Ch. 3. GENERAL TERMS. 279 

we meet with have or have not a right to the name circle, and so to show 
which of them, by having that essence, was of that species. And though 
there neither were nor had been in nature such a beast as an unicorn, or 
such a fish as a mermaid; yet supposing those names to stand for complex 
abstract ideas, that contained no inconsistency in them, the essence of a mer- 
maid is as intelligible as that of a man ; and the idea of an unicorn as cer- 
tain, steady, and permanent as that of a horse. From what has been 
said, it is evident, that the dextrine of the immutability of essences proves 
them to be only abstract ideas , and is founded on the relation established be- 
tween them and certain sounds ^as signs of them ; and will always be true as 
long as the same name can have the same signification. 

Sect. 20. Recapitulation. — To conclude, this is that which in short I 
would say, viz. that all the great business of genera and species, and their 
essences, amounts to no more but this, that men making abstract ideas, and 
settling them in their minds with names annexed to them, do thereby enable 
themselves to consider things, and discourse of them, as it were in bundles, 
for the easier and readier improvement and communication of their know- 
ledge ; which would advance but slowly, were their words and thoughts con- 
fined only to particulars. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF THE NAMES OF SIMPLE IDEAS. 

Sect. 1. Names of simple ideas, modes, and substances, have each some- 
thing peculiar. — Though all words, as I have shown, signify nothing imme- 
diately, but the ideas in the mind of the speaker ; yet upon a nearer survey 
we shall find that the names of simple ideas, mixed modes (under which 1 
comprised relations too,) and natural substances, have each of them some- 
thing peculiar and different from the other. For example : 

Sect. 2. First, names of simple ideas and substances intimate real exist- 
ence. — First, The names of simple ideas and substances, with the abstract 
ideas in the mind which they immediately signify, intimate also some real 
existence, from which was derived their original pattern. But the names of 
mixed modes terminate in the idea that is in the mind, and lead not the 
thoughts any farther, as we shall see more at large in the following chapter. 

Sect. 3. Secondly, names of simple ideas and modes signify always both 
real and nominal essence. — Secondly, The names of simple ideas and modes 
signify always the real as well as nominal essence of their species. But the 
names of natural substances signify rarely, if ever, any thing but barely the 
nominal essences of those species ; as we shall show in the chapter that treats 
of the names of substances in particular. 

Sect. 4. Thirdly, names of simple ideas undefinable. — Thirdly, The names 
of simple ideas are not capable of any definition; the names of all complex ideas 
are. It has not, that I know, been yet observed by any body what words are, 
and what are not capable of being defined ; the want whereof is (as I am apt 
to think) not seldom the occasion of great wrangling and obscurity in men's 
discourses, while some demand definitions of terms that cannot be defined ; 
and others think they ought not to rest satisfied in an explication made by 
a more general word, and its restriction (or, to speak in terms of art, by a 
genus and difference,) when even after such definition made according to 
rule, those who hear it have often no more a clear conception of the meaning 
of the word than they had before. This at least I think, that the showing 
what words are, and what are not capable of definitions, and wherein consists 
a good definition, is not wholly beside our present purpose ; and perhaps 
will afford so much light to the nature of these signs, and our ideas, as to 
deserve a more particular consideration. 



280 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

Sect. 5. If all were definable, it would be a process in infinitum. — I will 
not here trouble myself to prove that all terms are not definable from that pro- 
gress in infinitum, which it will visibly lead us into, if we should allow that 
all names could be defined. For if the terms of one definition were still to 
be defined by another, where at last should we stop ? But I shall, from the 
nature of our ideas, and the signification of our words, show why some names 
can, and others cannot, be defined, and which they are. 

Sect. 6. What a definition is. — I think it is agreed that a definition is 
nothing else, but the showing the meaning of one word by several other not 
synonymous terms. The meaning of words being only the ideas they are 
made to stand for by him that uses them, the meaning of any term is then 
shown, or the word is defined, when by other words the idea it is made the 
sign of, and annexed to, in the mind of the speaker, is, as it were, repre- 
sented or set before the view of another, and thus its signification ascer- 
tained; this is the only use and end of definitions, and therefore the only 
measure of what is, or is not a good definition. 

Sect. 7. Simple ideas why undefinable. — This being premised, I say that 
the names of simple ideas, and those only, are incapable of being defined. 
The reason whereof is this ; that the several terms of a definition, signifying 
several ideas, they can altogether by no means represent an idea, which has 
no composition at all : and therefore a definition, which is properly nothing 
but the showing the meaning of one word by several others not signifying 
each the same thing, can in the names of simple ideas have no place. 

Sect. 8. Instances ; motion. — The not observing this difference in our 
ideas, and their names, has produced that eminent trifling in the schools, 
which is so easy to be observed in the definitions they give us of some few oi 
these simple ideas. For as to the greatest part of them, even those masters 
of definitions were fain to leave them untouched, merely by the impossibility 
they found in it. What more exquisite jargon could the wit of man invent 
than this definition, " The act of a being in power as far forth as in power ]" 
which would puzzle any rational man, to whom it was not already known by 
its famous absurdity, to guess what word it could ever be supposed to be the 
explication of. If Tully, asking a Dutchman what " beweeginge^ was, should 
have received this explication in his own language, that it was " actus entis 
in potentia quatenus in potentia ;" I ask whether any one can imagine he 
could thereby have understood what the word " beweeginge''' signified, or 
have guessed what idea a Dutchman ordinarily had in his mind, and would 
signify to another, when he used that sound. 

Sect. 9. Nor have the modern philosophers, who have endeavoured to 
throw off the jargon of the schools, and speak intelligibly, much better suc- 
ceeded in defining simple ideas, whether by explaining their causes, or any 
otherwise. The atomists, who define motion to be a passage from one place 
to another, what do they more than put one synonymous word for another 1 
For what is passage other than motion 1 And if they were asked what pas- 
sage was, how could they better define it than by motion 1 For is it not at 
least as proper and significant to say, passage is a motion from one place to 
another, as to say, motion is a passage, &c? This is to translate, and not 
to define, when we change two words of the same signification one for an- 
other ; which, when one is better understood than the other, may serve to 
discover what idea the unknown stands for ; but is very far from a definition, 
unless we will say, every English word in the dictionary is the definition of 
the Latin word it answers, and that motion is a definition of motus. Nor 
will the successive application of the parts of the superficies of one body to 
those of another, which the Cartesians give us, prove a much better definition 
of motion, when well examined. 

Sect. 10. Light. — " The act of perspicuous, as far forth as perspicuous.'* 
is another peripatetic definition of a simple idea ; which though not more a„ 
surd, than the former of motion, yet betrays its uselessness and insignificanc 
more plainly, because experience will easily convince any one, that it canno 



Ch. 4. NAMES OF SIMPLE IDEAS. 281 

make the meaning of the word light (which it pretends to define) at all un- 
derstood by a blind man ; but the definition of motion appears not at first 
sight so useless, because it escapes this way of trial. For this simple idea, 
entering by the touch as well as sight, it is impossible to show an example 
of any one, who has no other way to get the idea of motion but barely by the 
definition of that name. Those who tell us that light is a great number of 
little globules, striking briskly on the bottom of the eye, speak more intel- 
ligibly than the schools ; but yet these words, ever so well understood, would 
make the idea the word light stands for no more known to a man that under- 
stands it not before, than if one should tell him that light was nothing but a 
company of little tennis-balls, which fairies all day long struck with rackets 
against some men's foreheads, whilst they passed by others. For granting 
this explication of the thing to be true, yet the idea of the cause of light, if 
we had it ever so exact, would no more give us the idea of light itself, as it 
is such a particular perception in us, than the idea of the figure and motion 
of a sharp piece of steel would give us the idea of that pain which it is able 
to cause in us. For the cause of any sensation, and the sensation itself, in 
all the simple ideas of one sense, are two ideas ; and two ideas so different 
and distant from one another, that no two can be more so. And, therefore, 
should Des Cartes's globules strike ever so long on the retina of a man, who 
was blind by a gutta serena, he would thereby never have any idea of light, 
or any thing approaching it, though he understood what little globules were, 
and what striking on another body was, ever so well. And therefore the 
Cartesians very well distinguish between the light which is the cause of that 
sensation in us, and the idea which is produced in us by it, and is that which 
is properly light. 

Sect. 11. Simple ideas, why undejinable, farther explained. — Simple 
ideas, as has been shown, are only to be got by those impressions objects 
themselves make on our minds, by the proper inlets appointed to each sort. 
If they are not received this way, all the words in the world, made use of to 
explain or define any of their names, will never be able to produce in us the 
idea it stands for. For words, being sounds, can produce in us no other simple 
ideas than of those very sounds, nor excite any in us but by that voluntary 
connexion which is known to be between them and those simple ideas, which 
common use has made them signs of. He that thinks otherwise, let him try 
if any words can give him the taste of a pine-apple, and make him have the 
true idea of the relish of that celebrated delicious fruit. So far as he is told 
it has a resemblance with any tastes, whereof he has the ideas already in his 
memory, imprinted there by sensible objects not strangers to his palate, so 
far may he approach that resemblance in his mind. But this is not giving us 
that idea by a definition, but exciting in us other simple ideas by their known 
names ; which will be still very different from the true taste of that fruit itself. 
In light and colours, and all other simple ideas, it is the same thing; for the 
signification of sounds is not natural, but only imposed and arbitrary. And 
no definition of light or redness is more fitted, or able to produce either of 
those ideas in us, than the sound light, or red, by itself. For to hope to pro- 
duce an idea of light or colour by a sound, however formed, is to expect that 
sounds should be visible, or colours audible, and to make the ears do the office 
of all the other senses : which is all one as to say, that we might taste, smell, 
and see by the ears ; a sort of philosophy worthy only of Sanchc Pancha, who 
had the faculty to see Dulcinea by hearsay. And therefore he that has not 
before received into his mind, by the proper inlet, the simple idea which any 
word stands for, can never come to know the signification of that word by 
any other words or sounds whatsoever, put together according to any rules 
of definition. The only way is by applying to his senses the proper object, 
and so producing that idea in him, for which he has learned the name already. 
A studious blind man, who had mightily beat his head about visible objects, 
and made use of the explication of his books and friends to understand those 
names of light and colours which often came in his way, bragged one day 
2 L 



282 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

that he now understood what scarlet signified. Upon which his friend de- 
manding what scarlet was ] the blind man answered, it was like the sound 
of a trumpet. Just such an understanding of the name of any other simple 
idea will he have, who hopes to get it only from a definition, or other words 
made use of to explain it. 

Sect. 12. The contrary showed in complex ideas, by instances of a sta- 
tue and rainbow. — The case is quite otherwise in complex ideas ; which con- 
sisting of several simple ones, it is in the power of words, standing for the 
several ideas that make that composition, to imprint complex ideas in the 
mind which were never there before, and so make their names be understood. 
In such collections of ideas, passing under one name, definition, or the teach- 
ing the signification of one word by several others, has place, and may make 
us understand the names of things which never came within the reach of our 
senses ; and frame ideas suitable to those in other men's minds, when they use 
those names : provided that none of the terms of the definition stand for any 
such simple ideas, which he to whom the explication is made has never yet 
had in his thought. Thus the word statue may be explained to a blind man 
by other words, when picture cannot ; his senses having given him the idea 
of figure, but not of colours, which therefore words cannot excite in him. 
This gained the prize to the painter against the statuary : each of which con- 
tending for the excellency of his art, and the statuary bragging that his was 
to be preferred, because it reached farther, and even those who had lost their 
eyes could yet perceive the excellency of it, the painter agreed to refer him- 
self to the judgment of a blind man ; who being brought where there was a 
statue, made by the one, and a picture drawn by the other; he was first led to 
the statue, in which he traced with his hands all the lineaments of the face 
and body, and with great admiration applauded the skill of the workman. 
But being led to the picture, and having his hands laid upon it, was told that 
now he touched the head, and then the forehead, eyes, nose, &c. as his hands 
moved over the parts of the picture on the cloth, without finding any the least 
distinction : whereupon he cried out, that certainly that must needs be a very 
admirable and divine piece of workmanship, which could represent to them all 
those parts where he could neither feel nor perceive any thing. 

Sect. 13. He that should use the word rainbow to one who knew all 
those colours, but yet had never seen that phenomenon, would, by enumera- 
ting the figure, largeness, position, and order of the colours, so well define 
that word, that it might be perfectly understood. But yet that definition, 
how exact and perfect soever, would never make a blind man understand it ; 
because several of the simple ideas that make that complex one, being such 
as he never received by sensation and experience, no words are able to ex- 
cite them in his mind. 

Sect. 14. The names of complex ideas when to be made intelligible by 
words. — Simple ideas, as has been shown, can only be got by experience, 
from those objects which are proper to produce in us those perceptions. 
When by this means we have our minds stored with them, and know the 
names for them, then we are in a condition to define, and by definition to un- 
derstand the names of complex ideas, that are made up of them. But when 
any term stands for a simple idea, that a man has never yet had in his mind, 
it is impossible by any words to make known its meaning to him. When 
any term stands for an idea a man is acquainted with, but is ignorant that 
that term is a sign of it ; there another name, of the same idea which he has 
been accustomed to, may make him understand its meaning. But in no case 
whatsoever is any name of any simple idea capable of a definition. 

Sect. 15. Fourthly, names of simple ideas least doubtful. — Fourthly, But 
though the names of simple ideas have not the help of definition to determine 
their signification; yet that hinders not but that they are generally less doubt- 
ful and uncertain, than those of mixed modes and substances ; because they 
standing only for one simple perception, men, for the most part, easily and 
perfectly agree in their signification ; and there is little room for mistake and 



Ch. 4. NAMES OF SIMPLE IDEAS. 283 

wrangling about their meaning. He that knows once that whiteness is the 
name of that colour he has observed in snow or milk, will not be apt to mis- 
apply that word, as long as he retains that idea ; which when he has quite 
lost, he is not apt to mistake the meaning of it, but perceives he understands 
it not. There is neither a multiplicity of simple ideas, to be put together, 
which makes the doubtfulness in the names of mixed modes ; nor a supposed 
but an unknown real essence, with properties depending thereon, the precise 
number whereof is also unknown, which makes the difficulty in the names of 
substances. But on the contrary, in simple ideas the whole signification of 
the name is known at once, and consists not of parts, whereof more or less' 
being put in, the idea may be varied, and so the signification of name be ob- 
scure and uncertain. 

Sect. 16. Fifthly, simple ideas have few ascents in linea prcedicamen- 
tali. — Fifthly, This farther may be observed concerning simple ideas and 
their names, that they have but few ascents in linea prcedicamentali (as they 
call it) from the lowest species to the summum genus. The reason whereof 
is, that the lowest species being but one simple idea, nothing can be left out 
of it ; that so the difference being taken away, it may agree with some other 
thing in one idea common to them both ; which, having one name, is the ge- 
nus of the other two : v. g. there is nothing that can be left out of the idea 
of white and red, to make them agree in one common appearance, and so 
have one general name ; as rationality being left out of the complex idea of 
man, makes it agree with brute, in the more general idea and name of ani- 
mal : and therefore when, to avoid unpleasant enumerations, men would com- 
prehend both white and red, and several other such simple ideas under one 
general name, they have been fain to do it by a word which denotes only the 
way they get into the mind. For when white, red, and yellow are all com- 
prehended under the genus or name colour, it signifies no more but such ideas 
as are produced in the mind only by the sight, and have entrance only 
through the eyes. And when they would frame yet a more general term, to 
comprehend both colours and sounds, and the like simple ideas, they do it by 
a word that signifies all such as come into the mind only by one sense : and 
so the general term quality, in its ordinary acceptation, comprehends colours, 
sounds, tastes, smells, and tangible qualities, with distinction from extension, 
number, motion, pleasure, and pain, which make impressions on the mind, 
and introduce their ideas by more senses than one. 

Sect. 17. Sixthly, names of simple ideas stand for ideas, not at all arbitrary. 
— Sixthly, The names of simple ideas, substances, and mixed modes, have also 
this difference ; that those of mixed modes stand for ideas perfectly arbitrary ; 
those of substances are not perfectly so, but refer to a pattern, though with some 
latitude ; and those of simple ideas are perfectly taken from the existence of 
things, and are not arbitrary at all. Which, what difference it makes in the 
significations of their names, we shall see in the following chapters. 

The names of simple modes differ little from those of simple ideas. 



CHAPTER V. 

OF THE NAMES OF MIXED MODES AND RELATIONS. 

Sect. 1. They stand for abstract ideas, as well as other general names. — 
The names ofmixed modes being general, they stand, as has been shown, for 
sorts of species of things, each of which has its peculiar essence. The 
essences of these species also, as has been shown, are nothing but the 
abstract ideas in the mind, to which the name is annexed. Thus far the 
names and essences ofmixed modes have nothing but what is common to them 
with other ideas; but if we take a little nearer survey of them, we slnJl find 
that they have something peculiar, which perhaps may deserve our attention. 



284 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3 

Sect. 2. First, the ideas they stand for are made by the understanding. — 
The first particularity I shall observe in them is, that the abstract ideas, or, 
if you please, the essences of the several species of mixed modes are made 
by the understanding, wherein they differ from those of simple ideas: in 
which sort the mind has no power to make any one, but only receives such 
as are presented to it by the real existence of things operating upon it. 

Sect. 3. Secondly, made arbitrarily, and without patterns. — In the next 
place, these essences of the species of mixed modes are not only made by the 
mind, but made very arbitrarily, made without patterns, or reference to any 
real existence. Wherein they differ from those of substances, which carry 
with them the supposition of some real being, from which they are taken, and 
to which they are conformable. But in its complex ideas of mixed modes, 
the mind takes a liberty not to follow the existence of things exactly. It unites 
and retains certain collections, as so many distinct specific ideas, whilst 
others, that as often occur in nature, and are as plainly suggested by outward 
things, pass neglected, without particular names or specifications. Nor does 
the mind, in these of mixed modes, as in the complex idea of substances, ex- 
amine them by the real existence of things: or verify them by patterns, con- 
taining such peculiar compositions in nature. To know whether his idea of 
adultery or incest be right, will a man seek it any where among things exist- 
ing 1 Or is it true, because any one has been witness to such an action 1 
No : but it suffices here, that men have put together such a collection into 
one complex idea, that makes the archetype and specific idea, whether ever 
any such action were committed in rerum natura or no. 

Sect. 4. How this is done. — To understand this right, we must consider 
wherein this making of these complex ideas consists ; and that is not in the 
making any new idea, but putting together those which the mind had before. 
Wherein the mind does these three things : first, it chooses a certain num- 
ber ; secondly, it gives them connexion, and makes them into one idea ; thirdly, 
it ties them together by a name. If we examine how the mind proceeds in 
these, and what liberty it takes in them, we shall easily observe how these 
essences of the species of mixed modes are the workmanship of the mind, 
and consequently, that the species themselves are of men's making. 

Sect. 5. Evidently arbitrary, in that the idea is often before the ex- 
istence. — Nobody can doubt, but that these ideas of mixed modes are made 
by a voluntary collection of ideas put together in the mind, independent 
from any original patterns in nature, who will but reflect that this sort of 
complex ideas may be made, abstracted, and have names given them, and 
so a species be constituted, before any one individual of that species ever 
existed. Who can doubt but the ideas of sacrilege or adultery might be 
framed in the minds of men, and have names given them; and so these 
species of mixed modes be constituted, before either of them was ever 
committed ; and might be as well discoursed of and reasoned about, and 
as certain truths discovered of them, whilst yet they had no being but in 
the understanding, as well as now, that they have but too frequently a real 
existence? Whereby it is plain, how much the sorts of mixed modes are 
the creatures of the understanding, where they have a being as subservient 
to all the ends of real truth and knowledge, as when they really exist : and 
we cannot doubt but law-makers have often made laws about species of ac- 
tions, which were only the creatures of their own understandings ; beings 
that had no other existence but in their own minds. And I think nobody 
can deny, but that the resurrection was a species of mixed modes in the mind 
before it really existed. 

Sect. 6. Instances; murder, incest, stabbing. — To see how arbitrarily 
these essences of mixed modes are made by the mind, we need but take a 
view of almost any of them. A little looking into them will satisfy us, that 
it is the mind that combines several scattered independent ideas into one 
complex one, and, by the common name it gives them, makes them the es- 
sence of a certain species, without regulating itself by any connexion they 



Ch. 5. NAMES OF MIXED MODES. 285 

have in nature. For what greater connexion in nature has the idea of a man, 
than the idea of a sheep, with killing ; that this is made a particular species 
of action, signified by the word murder, and the other not 1 Or what union 
is there in nature between the idea of the relation of a father, with killing, 
than that of a son, or neighbour : that those are combined into one complex 
idea, and thereby made the essence of the distinct species parricide, whilst 
the other makes no distinct species at all] But though they have made kill- 
ing a man's father, or mother, a distinct species from killing his son, or 
daughter ; yet, in some other cases, son and daughter are taken in too, as well 
as father and mother ; and they are all equally comprehended in the same 
species, as in that of incest. Thus the mind in mixed modes arbitrarily unites 
into complex ideas such as it finds convenient; whilst others, that have alto- 
gether as much union in nature, are left loose, and never combined into one 
idea, because they have no need of one name. It is evident, then, that the 
mind by its free choice gives a connexion to a certain number of ideas, which 
in nature have no more union with one another, than others that it leaves 
out: why else is the part of the weapon, the beginning of the wound is made 
with, taken notice of to make the distinct species called stabbing, and the 
figure and matter of the weapon left out? I do not say this is done without 
reason, as we shall see more by and by; but this, I say, that it is done by the 
free choice of the mind, pursuing its own ends ; and that therefore these spe- 
cies of mixed modes are the workmanship of the understanding: and there is 
nothing more evident, than that, for the most part, in the framing these ideas, 
the mind searches not its patterns in nature, nor refers the ideas it makes to 
the real existence of things ; but puts such together, as may best serve its 
own purposes, without tying itself to a precise limitation of any thing that 
really exists. 

Sect. 7. But still subservient to the end of language. — But though 
these complex ideas, or essences of mixed modes, depend on the mind, and 
are made by it with great liberty; yet they are not made at random, and jum- 
uled together without any reason at all. Though these complex ideas be not 
ilways copied from nature, yet they are always suited to the end for which 
abstract ideas are made ; and though they be combinations made of ideas that 
are loose enough, and have as little union in themselves, as several others to 
which the mind never gives a connexion that combines them into one idea ; 
yet they are always made for the convenience of communication, which ia 
the chief end of language. The use of language is by short sounds to sig- 
nify with ease and despatch general conceptions ; wherein not only abund- 
ance of particulars may be contained, but also a great variety of independent 
ideas collected into one complex one. In the making, therefore, of the spe- 
cies of mixed modes, men have had regard only to such combinations as they 
had occasion to mention one to another. Those they have combined into 
distinct complex ideas, and given names to ; whilst others, that in nature 
have as near a union, are left loose and unregarded. For to go no further 
than human actions themselves, if they would make distinct abstract ideas of 
all the varieties might be observed in them, the number must be infinite, and 
the memory confounded with the plenty, as well as overcharged to little pur- 
pose. It suffices, that men make and name so many complex ideas of these 
mixed modes, as they find they have occasion to have names for, in the or- 
dinary occurrence of their affairs. If they join to the idea of killing the idea 
of father, or mother, and so make a distinct species from killing a man's son 
or neighbour, it is because of the different heinousness of the crime, and the 
distinct punishment is due to the murdering a man's father and mother, dif- 
ferent from what ought to be inflicted on the murder of a son or neighbour ; 
and therefore they find it necessary to mention it by a distinct name, which 
is the end of making that distinct combination. But though the ideas of 
mother and daughter are so differently treated, in reference to the idea of 
killing, that the one is joined with it, to make a distinct- abstract idea with a 
name, and so a distinct species, and the other not ; yet in respect of carnal 



285 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3 

knowledge, they are both taken m under incest : and that still for the same 
convenience of expressing- under one name, and reckoning of one species, 
such unclean mixtures as have a peculiar turpitude beyond others' and this 
to avoid circumlocutions and tedious descriptions. 

Sect. 8. Whereof the intranslatable words of divers languages are a 
proof — A moderate skill in different languages will easily satisfy one of the 
truth of this, it being so obvious to observe great store of words in one lan- 
guage, which have not any that answer them in another. Which plainly 
snows, that those of one country, by their customs and manner of life, have 
found occasion to make several complex ideas, and given names to them, 
which others never collected into specific ideas. This could not have hap- 
pened, if these species were the steady workmanship of nature, and not col- 
lections made and abstracted by the mind, in order to naming, and for the 
convenience of communication. The terms of our law, which are not empty 
sounds, will hardly find words that answer them in the Spanish or Italian, no- 
scanty languages ; much less, I think, could any one translate them into the 
Caribbee or Westoe tongues : and the Versura of the Romans, or Corban of 
the Jews, have no words in other languages to answer them: the reason 
whereof is plain, from what has been said. Nay, if we look a little more 
nearly into this matter, and exactly compare different languages, we shall 
find, that though they have words which in translations and dictionaries are 
supposed to answer one another, yet there is scarce one of ten among the 
names of complex ideas, especially of mixed modes, that stands for the same 
precise idea, which the word does that in dictionaries it is rendered by. 
There are no ideas more common, and less compounded, than the measures 
of time, extension, and weight, and the Latin names, hora, pes, libra, are 
without difficulty rendered by the English names, hour, foot, and pound : but 
yet there is nothing more evident, than that the ideas a Roman annexed to 
these Latin names were very far different from those which an Englishman 
expresses by those English ones. And if either of these should make use of 
the measures that those of the other language designed by their names, he 
would be quite out in his account. These are too sensible proofs to be 
doubted ; and we shall find this much more so, in the names of more abstract 
and compounded ideas, such as are the greatest part of those which make up 
moral discourses ; whose names, when men come curiously to compare with 
those they are translated into, in other languages, they will find very few of 
them exactly to correspond in the whole extent of their significations. 

Sect. 9. This shows species to be made for communication. — The reason 
why I take so particular notice of this is, that we may not be mistaken about 
genera and species, and their essences, as if they were things regularly and 
constantly made by nature, and had a real existence in things ; when they 
appear, upon a more wary survey, to be nothing else but an artifice of the 
understanding, for the easier signifying such collections of ideas as it should 
often have occasion to communicate by one general term ; under which divers 
particulars, as far forth as they agreed to that abstract idea, might be com- 
prehended. And if the doubtful signification of the word species may make 
it sound harsh to some, that I say the species of mixed modes are made by 
the understanding ; yet, I think, it can by nobody be denied, that it is the 
mind makes those abstract complex ideas to which specific names are given. 
And if it be true, as it is, that the mind makes the patterns for sorting and 
naming of things, I leave it to be considered who makes the boundaries of the 
sort or species ; since with me species and sort have no other difference than 
that of a Latin and English idiom. 

Sect. 10. In mixed modes it is the name that ties the combination to- 
gether, and makes it a species. — The near relation that there is between spe- 
cies, essences, and their general names, at least in mixed modes, will farther 
appear, when we consider that it is the name that seems to preserve those 
essences, and give them their lasting duration. For the connexion between 
the loose parts of those complex ideas being made by the mind, this union 



Ch. 5. NAMES OF MIXED MODES. 287 

which has no particular foundation in nature, would cease again, were there 
not something that did, as it were, hold it together, and keep the parts from 
scattering. Though, therefore, it be the mind that makes the collection, it 
is the name which is, as it were, the knot that ties them fast together. What 
a vast variety of different ideas does the word triumphus hold together, and 
deliver to us as one species ! Had this name been never made, or quite lost, 
we might, no doubt, have had descriptions of what passed in that solemnity : 
but yet, I think, that which holds those different parts together, in the unity 
of one complex idea, is that very word annexed to it ; without which the 
several parts of that would no more be thought to make one thing, than any 
other show, which, having never been made but once, had never been united 
into one complex idea, under one denomination. How much, therefore, in 
mixed modes, the unity necessary to any essence depends on the mind, and 
how much the continuation and fixing of that unity depends on the name in 
common use annexed to it, I leave to be considered by those who look upon 
essences and species as real established things in nature. 

Sect. 11. Suitable to this, we find, that men speaking of mixed modes, 
seldom imagine or take any other for species of them, but such as are set out 
by name : because they being of man's making only, in order to naming, no 
such species are taken notice of, or supposed to be, unless a name be joined 
to it, as the sign of a man's having combined into one idea several loose ones : 
and by that name giving a lasting union to the parts, which could otherwise 
cease to have any, as soon as the mind laid by that abstract idea, and ceased 
actually to think on it. But when a name is once annexed to it, wherein the 
parts of that complex idea have a settled and permanent union ; then is the 
essence as it were established, and the species looked on as complete. For 
to what purpose should the memory charge itself with such compositions, un- 
less it were by abstraction to make them general 1 And to what purpose 
make them general, unless it were that they might have general names, for 
the convenience of discourse and communication 1 Thus we see, that kill 
ing a man with a sword or a hatchet, are looked on as no distinct species of 
action : but if the point of the sword first enter the body, it passes for a dis- 
tinct species, where it has a distinct name ; as in England, in whose language 
it is called stabbing : but in another country, where it has not happened to 
be specified under a peculiar name, it passes not for a distinct species. But 
in the species of corporeal substances, though it be the mind that makes the 
nominal essence ; yet since those ideas which are combined in it are supposed 
to have a union in nature, whether the mind joins them or no, therefore those 
are looked on as distinct names, without any operation of the mind, either 
abstracting or giving a name to that complex idea. 

Sect. 12. For the originals of mixed modes, we look no farther than the 
mind, which also shows them to be the workmanship of the understand- 
ing. — Conformable also to what has been said concerning the essences of 
the species of mixed modes, that they are the creatures of the understanding 
rather than the works of nature : conformable, I say, to this, we find that 
their names lead our thoughts to the mind, and no farther. When we speak 
of justice, or gratitude, we frame to ourselves no imagination of any thing 
existing, which we would conceive ; but our thoughts terminate in the ab- 
stract ideas of those virtues, and look not farther: as they do, when we speak 
of a horse, or iron, whose specific ideas we consider not as barely in the 
mind, but as in things themselves, which afford the original patterns of those 
ideas. But in mixed modes, at least the most considerable parts of them, 
which are moral beings, we consider the original patterns as being in the 
mind ; and to those we refer for the distinguishing of particular beings undei 
names. And hence I think it is, that these essences of the species of mixed 
modes are by a more particular name called notions, as, by a peculiar right, 
appertaining to the understanding. 

Sect. 13. Their being made by the understanding without patterns, 
shows the reason why they are so compounded, — Hence likewise we may 



288 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3 

learn, why the complex ideas of mixed modes are commonly more com- 
pounded and decompounded than those of natural substances. Because they 
being the workmanship of the understanding pursuing only its own ends, and 
the conveniency of expressing in short those ideas it would make known to 
another, it does with great liberty unite often in one abstract idea things that 
in their nature have no coherence ; and so, under one term, bundle together 
a great variety of compounded and decompounded ideas. Thus the name of 
procession, what a great mixture of independent ideas of persons, habits, ta- 
pers, orders, motions, sounds, does it contain in that complex one, which 
the mind of man has arbitrarily put together, to express by that one name ! 
Whereas the complex ideas of the sorts of substances are usually made up of 
only a small number of simple ones ; and in the species of animals, these two, 
viz. shape and voice, commonly make the whole nominal essence. 

Sect. 14. Names of mixed modes stand always for their real essences. — 
Another thing we may observe from what has been said is, that the names of 
mixed modes signify (when they have any determined signification) the real 
essences of their species. For these abstract ideas being the workmanship 
of the mind, and not referred to the real existence of things, there is no sup- 
position of any thing more signified by that name, but barely that complex 
idea the mind itself has formed, which is all it would have expressed by it : 
and is that on which all the properties of the species depend, and from which 
alone they all flow: and so in these the real and nominal essence is the same ; 
which of what concernment it is to the certain knowledge of general truth, 
we shall see hereafter. 

Sect. 15. Why their names are usually got before their ideas. — This 
also may show us the reason why, for the most part, the names of mixed 
modes are got before the ideas they stand for are perfectly known. Because 
there being no species of these ordinarily taken notice of, but what have 
names ; and those species, or rather their essences, being abstract complex 
ideas made arbitrarily by the mind ; it is convenient, if not necessary, to know 
the names, before one endeavour to frame these complex ideas : unless a man 
will fill his head with a company of abstract complex ideas, which others 
having no names for, he has nothing to do with, but to lay by, and forget 
again. I confess, that in the beginning of languages it was necessary to 
have the idea, before one gave it the name : and so it is still, where making 
a new complex idea, one also, by giving it a new name, makes a new word. 
But this concerns not languages made, which have generally pretty well pro- 
vided for ideas, which men have frequent occasion to have and communicate : 
and in such, I ask, whether it be not the ordinary method, that children learn 
the names of mixed modes, before they have their ideas'? What one of a 
thousand ever frames the abstract ideas of glory and ambition, before he has 
heard the names of them 1 In simple ideas and substances I grant it is other- 
wise ; which being such ideas as have a real existence and union in nature, 
the ideas and names are got one before the other, as it happens. 

Sect. 16. Reason of 7ny being so large on this subject. — What has been 
said here of mixed modes is, with very little difference, applicable also to re- 
lations ; which, since every man himself may observe, I may spare myself 
the pains to enlarge on : especially, since what I have here said concerning 
words in this third book, will possibly be thought by some to be much more 
'.han what so slight a subject required. I allow it might be brought into a 
larrower compass ; but I was willing to stay my reader on an argument that 
appears to me new, and a little out of the way (I am sure it is one I thought 
.lot of when I began to write), that by searching it to the bottom, and turn- 
nig it on every side, some part or other might meet with every one's thoughts, 
And give occasion to the most averse or negligent to reflect on a general 
miscarriage, which, though of great consequence, is little taken notice of. 
When it is considered what a pudder is made about essences, and how much 
all sorts of knowledge, discourse, and conversation are pestered and disor- 
dered by the careless and confused use and application of words, it will per- 



Ch. 5. NAMES OF MIXED MODES. 289 

haps be thought worth while thoroughly to lay it open. And I shall be par- 
doned if I have dwelt long on an argument which, I think, therefore needs to 
oe inculcated ; because the faults men are usually guilty of in this kind, are 
not only the greatest hinderances of true knowledge, but are so well thought 
of as to pass for it. Men would often see what a small pittance of reason 
and truth, or possibly none at all, is mixed with those huffing opinions thev 
are swelled with, if they would but look beyond fashionable sounds, and observe 
what ideas are, or are not comprehended under those words with which they 
are so armed at all points, and with which they so confidently lay about 
them. I shall imagine I have done some service to truth, peace, and learn- 
ing, if, by any enlargement on this subject, I can make men reflect on their 
own use of language; and give them reason to suspect, that since it is fre- 
quent for others, it may also be possible for them to have sometimes very 
good and approved words in their mouths and writings, with very uncertain, 
little, or no signification. And therefore it is not unreasonable for them to 
be wary herein themselves, and not to be unwilling to have them examined 
by others. With this design, therefore, I shall go on with what I have far- 
ther to say concerning this matter. 



CHAPTER VI. 

OF THE NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 

Sect. 1. The common names of substances stand for sorts. — The com- 
mon names of substances, as well as other general terms, stand for sorts ; 
which is nothing else but the being made signs of such complex ideas, 
wherein several particular substances do, or might agree, by viitue of whicji 
they are capable of being comprehended in one common conception, and sig- 
nified by one name. I say, do or might agree : for though there be but one 
sun existing in the world, yet the idea of its being abstracted, so that more 
substances (if there were several) might each agree in it ; it is as much a 
sort, as if there were as many suns as there are stars. They want not their 
reasons who think there are, and that each fixed star would answer the idea 
the name sun stands for, to one who was placed in a due distance ; which, 
by the way, may show us how much the sorts, or, if you please, genera and 
species of things (for those Latin terms signify to me no more than the En- 
glish word sort) depend on such collections of ideas as men have made, and 
not on the real nature of things ; since it is not impossible but that, in pro- 
priety of speech, that might be a sun to one, which is a star to another. 

Sect. 2. The essence of each sort is the abstract idea. — The measure and 
boundary of each sort, or species, whereby it is constituted that particular 
sort, and distinguished from others, is that we call its essence, which is no- 
thing but that abstract idea to which the name is annexed ; so that every 
tiling contained in that idea is essential to that sort. This, though it be all 
the essence of natural substances that we know, or by which we distinguish 
them into sorts ; yet I call it by a peculiar name, the nominal essence, to dis- 
tinguish it from the real constitution of substances, upon which depends this 
nominal essence, and all the properties of that sort; which, therefore, as has 
b9en said, may be called the real essence : v. g. the nominal essence of gold 
is that complex idea the word gold stands for, let it be, for instance, a body 
yellow, of a certain weight, malleable, fusible, and fixed. But the real es- 
sence is the constitution of the insensible parts of that body, on which those 
qualities and all the other properties of gold depend. How far these two are- 
different, though they are both called essence, is obvious at first sight to 
discover. 

Sect. 3. The nominal and real essence different. — For though perhaps 
voluntary motion, with sense and reason, joined to a body of a certain shape, 



290 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

be the complex idea to which I, and others, annex the name man, and so bo 
the nominal essence of the species so called; yet nobody will say that that com- 
plex idea is the real essence and source of all those operations, which are to 
be found in any individual of that sort. The foundation of all those qualities, 
which are the ingredients of our complex idea, is something quite different : 
and had we such a knowledge of that constitution of man, from which his 
faculties of moving, sensation, and reasoning, and other powers flow, and on 
which his so regular shape depends, as it is possible angels have, and it is 
certain his Maker has ; we should have a quite other idea of his essence than 
what now is contained in our definition of that species, be it what it will: and 
our idea of any individual man would be as far different from what it is now. 
as is his who knows all the springs and wheels and other contrivances withm 
of the famous clock at Strasburg, from that which a gazing countryman has 
for it, who barely sees the motion of the hand, and hears the clock strike, 
and observes only some of the outward appearances. 

Sect. 4. Nothing essential to individuals. — That essence, in the ordinary 
use of the word, relates to sorts ; and that it is considered in particular be- 
ings no farther than as they are ranked into sorts ; appears from hence : that 
take but away the abstract ideas, by which we sort individuals, and rank them 
under common names, and then the thought of any thing essential to any of 
them instantly vanishes ; we have no notion of the one without the other , 
which plainly shows their relation. It is necessary for me to be as I am : 
God and nature has made me so : but there is nothing I have so essential 
to me. An accident, or disease, may very much alter my colour, or shape ; 
a fever, or fall, may take away my reason or memory, or both, and an apo- 
plexy leave neither sense nor understanding, no, nor life. Other creatures 
of my shape may be made with more and better, or fewer and worse facul- 
ties than I have ; and others may have reason and sense in a shape and body 
very different from mine. None of these are essential to the one, or the 
other, or to any individual whatever, till the mind refers it to some sort or 
species of things ; and then presently, according to the abstract idea of that 
sort, something is found essential. Let any one examine his own thoughts, 
and he will find that as soon as he supposes or speaks of essential, the con- 
sideration of some species, or the complex idea, signified by some general 
name, comes into his mind; and it is in reference to that, that this or that 
quality is said to be essential. So that if it be asked, whether it be essential 
to me or any other particular corporeal being to have reason 1 I say no ; no 
more than it is essential to this white thing I write on to have word's in it. 
But if that particular being be to be counted of the sort man, and to have the 
name man given it, then reason is essential to it, supposing reason to be a 
part of the complex idea the name man stands for ; as it is essential to this 
thing I write on to contain words, if I will give it the name treatise, and 
rank it under that species. So that essential, and not essential, relate only 
to our abstract ideas, and the names annexed to them : which amounts to no 
more but this, that whatever particular thing has not in it those qualities, 
which are contained in the abstract idea, which any general term stands for, 
cannot be ranked under that species, nor be called by that name, since that 
abstract idea is the very essence of that species. 

Sect. 5. Thus if the idea of body, with some people, be bare extension or 
space, then solidity is not essential to body : if others make the idea, to which 
they give the name body, to be solidity and extension, then solidity is essen- 
tial to body. That, therefore, and that alone, is considered as essentia', 
which makes a part of the complex idea the name of a sort stands for, with- 
out which no particular thing can be reckoned of that sort, nor be entitled to 
that name. Should there be found a parcel of matter that had all the other 
qualities that are in iron, but wanted obedience to the loadstone ; and would 
neither be drawn by it, nor receive direction from it ; would any one question 
whether it wanted any thing essential? It would be absurd to ask, whether 
a thing really existing wanted any thing essential to it. Or could it be do 



Ch. 6. NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 291 

manded, whether this made an essential or specific difference or no ; since 
we have no other measure essential or specific, but our abstract ideas 1 And 
to talk of specific differences in nature, without reference to general ideas 
and names, is to talk unintelligibly. For I would ask any one, what is suf- 
ficient to make an essential difference in nature, between any two particular 
beings, without any regard had to some abstract idea, which is looked upon 
as the essence and standard of a species ) All such patterns and standards 
being quite laid aside, particular beings, considered barely in themselves, will 
be found to have all their qualities equally essential ; and every thing, in each 
individual, will be essential to it, or, which is more, nothing at all. For 
though it may be reasonable to ask, whether obeying the magnet be essen- 
tial to iron ] yet, I think, it is very improper and insignificant to ask, whe- 
ther it be essential to the particular parcel of matter I cut my pen with, with- 
out considering it under the name iron, or as being of a certain species 1 
And if, as has been said, our abstract ideas, which have names annexed to 
them, are the boundaries of species, nothing can be essential but what is con- 
tained in those ideas. 

Sect. 6. It is true, I have often mentioned a real essence, distinct in sub- 
stances from those abstract ideas of them, which I call their nominal essence. 
By this real essence I mean that real constitution of any thing, which is the 
foundation of all those properties that are combined in, and are constantly 
found to co-exist with the nominal essence ; and that particular constitution 
which every thing has within itself, without any relation to any thing with- 
out it. But essence, even in this sense, relates to a sort, and supposes a spe- 
cies : for being that real constitution, on which the properties depend, it ne- 
cessarily supposes a sort of things, properties belonging only to species, and 
not to individuals ; v. g. supposing the nominal essence of gold to be a body 
of such a peculiar colour and weight, with malleability and fusibility, the real 
essence is that constitution of the parts of matter, on which these qualities 
and their union depend ; and is also the foundation of its solubility in aqua 
regia and other properties accompanying that complex idea. Here are essen- 
ces and properties, but all upon supposition of a sort, or general abstract 
idea, which is considered as immutable : but there is no individual parcel of 
matter, to which any of these qualities are so annexed, as to be essential to 
it, or inseparable from it. That which is essential belongs to it as a con- 
dition, whereby it is of this or that sort: but take away the consideration of 
its being ranked under the name of some abstract idea; and then there is no- 
thing necessary to it, nothing inseparable from it. Indeed, as to the real es- 
sences of substances, we only suppose their being, without precisely knowing 
what they are: but that which annexes them still to the species, is the no- 
minal essence, of which they are the supposed foundation and cause. 

Sect. 7. The nominal essence bounds the species. — The next thing to be 
considered is, by which of those essences it is that substances are determined 
into sorts, or species ; and that, it is evident, is by the nominal essence. For 
it is that alone that the name, which is the mark of the sort, signifies. It is 
impossible, therefore, that any thing should determine the sorts of things 
which we rank under general names, but that idea which that name is de- 
signed as a mark for ; which is that, as has been shown, which we call no- 
minal essence. Why do we say, this is a horse, and that a mule ; this is an 
animal, that an herb ] How comes any particular thing to be of this or that 
sort, but because it has that nominal essence, or, which is all one, agrees to 
that abstract idea that name is annexed to % And I desire any one but to re- 
flect on his own thoughts, when he hears or speaks any of those, or other 
names of substances, to know what sort of essences they stand for. 

Sect. 8. And that the species of things to us are nothing but the ranking 
them under distinct names, according to the complex ideas in us, and not ac- 
cording to precise, distinct, real essences in them, is plain from hence, that 
we find many of the individuals that are ranked into one sort, called by one 
common name, and so received as being of one species, have yet qualities 



292 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 8. 

depending on their real constitutions, as far different one from another, as 
from others, from which they are accounted to differ specifically. This, as 
it is easy to be observed by all who have to do with natural bodies ; so che- 
mists especially are often, by sad experience, convinced of it, when they, 
sometimes in vain, seek for the same qualities in one parcel of sulphur, anti- 
mony, or vitriol, which they have found in others. For though they are bo- 
dies of the same species, having the same nominal essence, under the same 
name ; yet do they often, upon severe ways of examination, betray quali- 
ties so different one from another, as to frustrate the expectation and labour 
of very wary chemists. But if things were distinguished into species, ac- 
cording to their real essences, it would be as impossible to find different pro- 
perties in any two individual substances of the same species, as it is to find 
different properties in two circles, or two equilateral triangles. That is pro- 
perly the essence to us, which determines every particular to this or that 
classis ; or, which is the same thing, to this or that general name : and what 
can that be else, but that abstract idea, to which that name is annexed? and 
so has, in truth, a reference, not so much to the being of particular things, as 
to their general denominations. 

Sect. 9. Not the real essence, which we know not. — Nor indeed can we 
rank and sort things, and consequently (which is the end of sorting) deno- 
minate them by their real essences, because we know them not. Our facul- 
ties carry us no farther toward the knowledge and distinction of substances, 
than a collection of those sensible ideas which we observe in them ; which, 
however made with the greatest diligence and exactness we are capable of, 
yet it is more remote from the true internal constitution from which those 
qualities flow, than, as I said, a countryman's idea is from the inward con- 
trivance of that famous clock at Strasburgh, whereof he only sees the out- 
ward figure and motions. There is not so contemptible a plant or animal, 
that does not confound the most enlarged understanding. Though the fami- 
liar use of things about us take off our wonder, yet it cures not our igno- 
rance. When we come to examine the stones we tread on, or the iron we 
daily handle, we presently find we know not their make, and can give no rea- 
son of the different qualities we find in them. It is evident the internal con- 
stitution, whereon their properties depend, is unknown to us. For to go no 
farther than the grossest and most obvious we can imagine among them, what 
is that texture of parts, that real essence, that makes lead and antimony fu- 
sible ; wood and stones not] What makes lead and iron malleable ; anti- 
mony and stones not] And yet how infinitely these come short of the 
fine contrivances, and unconceivable real essences of plants or aniraals, every 
one knows. The workmanship of the all-wise and powerful God, in the great 
fabric of the universe, and every part thereof, farther exceeds the capacity 
and comprehension of the most inquisitive and intelligent man, than the best 
contrivance of the most ingenious man doth the conceptions of the most ig- 
norant of rational creatures. Therefore we in vain pretend to range things 
mto sorts, and dispose them into certain classes, under names, by their 
real essences, that are so far from our discovery or comprehension. A b^ind 
man may as soon sort things by their colours, and he that has lost his sm/?Il 
as well distinguish a lily and a rose by their odours, as by those internal con- 
stitutions which he knows not. He that thinks he can distinguish sheep and 
goats by their real essences, that are unknown to him, may be pleased to try 
his skill in those species, called cassiowary and querechinchio ; and by their 
internal real essences determine the boundaries of those species, without 
knowing the complex idea of sensible qualities, that each of those names 
stand for, in the countries where those animals are to be found. 

Sect. 10. Not substantial forms, which we know less. — Those, therefore, 
who have been taught, that the several species of substances had their dis- 
tinct, internal, substantial forms ; and that it was those forms which made the 
distinction of substances into their true species and genera ; were led yet far- 
ther out of the way, by having their minds set upon fruitless inquiries after 



Ch. 6. NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 293 

substantial forms, wholly unintelligible, and whereof we have scarce so much 
as any obscure or confused conception in general. 

Sect. 11. That the nominal essence is that whereby we distinguish spe- 
cies, farther evident from spirits. — That our ranking and distinguishing na- 
tural substances into species, consists in the nominal essences the mind makes, 
and not in the real essences to be found in the things themselves, is farther 
evident from our ideas of spirits. For the mind getting, only by reflecting 
on its own operations, those simple ideas which it attributes to spirits, it 
hath, or can have no other notion of spirit, but by attributing all those opera- 
tions, it finds in itself, to a sort of beings, without consideration of matter. 
And even the most advanced notion we have of God is but attributing the 
same simple ideas, which we have got from reflection on what we find in our- 
selves, and which we conceive to have more perfection in them, than would 
be in their absence ; attributing, I say, those simple ideas to him in an un- 
limited degree. Thus having got, from reflecting on ourselves, the idea of 
existence, knowledge, power, and pleasure, each of which we find it better 
to have than to want ; and the more we have of each the better ; joining al] 
these together, with infinity to each of them, we have the complex idea of 
an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, infinitely wise and happy Being. And 
though we are told, that there are different species of angels ; yet we know 
not how to frame distinct specific ideas of them : not out of any conceit that 
the existence of more species than one of spirits is impossible, but because, 
having no more simple ideas (nor being able to frame more) applicable to 
such beings, but only those few taken from ourselves, and from the actions 
of our own minds in thinking, and being delighted, and moving several parts 
of our bodies, we can no otherwise distinguish in our conceptions the several 
species of spirits one from another, but by attributing those operations and 
powers, we find in ourselves, to them in a higher or lower degree ; and so 
have no very distinct specific ideas of spirits, except only of God, to whom 
we attribute both duration, and a]l those other ideas with infinity ; to the other 
spirits* with limitation. Nor as I humbly conceive do we, between God and 
them in our ideas, put any difference by any number of simple ideas, which 
we have of one and not of the other; but only that of infinity. All the par- 
ticular ideas of existence, knowledge, will, power, and motion, &c. being 
ideas derived from the operations of our minds, we attribute all of them to 
ail sorts of spirits, with the difference only of degrees to the utmost we can 
imagine, even infinity, when we would frame, as well as we can, an idea of 
the first being ; who yet, it is certain, is infinitely more remote, in the real 
excellency of his nature, from the highest and most perfect of all created beings, 
than the greatest man, nay purest seraph, is from the most contemptible part 
of matter ; and consequently must infinitely exceed what our narrow under- 
standings can conceive of him. 

Sect. 12. Whereof there are probably numberless species. — It is not im- 
possible to conceive, nor repugnant to reason, that there may be many spe- 
cies of spirits, as much separated and diversified one from another by distinct 
properties whereof we have no ideas, as the species of sensible things are 
distinguished one from another by qualities which we know and observe in 
them. That there should be more species of intelligent creatures above us, 
than there are of sensible and material below us, is probable to me from hence; 
that in all the visible corporeal world, we see no chasms or gaps. All quite 
down from us the descent is by easy steps, and a continued series of things, 
that in each remove differ very little one from the other. There are fishes 
that have wings, and are not strangers to the airy region ; and there are some 
birds that are inhabitants of the water, whose blood is cold as fishes, and their 
flesh so like in taste, that the scrupulous are allowed them on fish-days. 
There are animals so near of kin both to birds and beasts, that they are in 
the middle between both : amphibious animals link the terrestrial and aquatic 
together ; seals live at land and sea, and porpoises have the warm blood and 
entrails of a hog, not to mention what is confidently reported of mermaids 



294 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

or sea-men. There are some brutes, that seem to have as much knowledge 
and reason as some that are called men; and the animal and vegetable king- 
doms are so nearly joined, that if you will take the lowest of one, and the 
highest of the other, there will scarce be perceived any great difference be- 
tween them ; and so on, till we come to the lowest anil the most inorganical 
parts of matter, we shall rind every where, that the several species are linked 
together, and differ but in almost insensible degrees. And when we consider 
the infinite power and wisdom of the Maker, we have reason to think, that it 
is suitable to the magnificent harmony of the universe, and the great design 
and infinite goodness of the Architect, that the species of creatures should 
also, by gentle degrees, ascend upward from us toward his infinite perfection, 
as we see they gradually descend from us downward : which, if it be proba- 
ble, we have reason then to be persuaded, that there are far more species of 
creatures above us than there are beneath : we being, in degrees of perfec- 
tion, much more remote from the infinite being of God, than we are from the 
lowest state of being*, and that which approaches nearest to nothing. And 
yet of all those distinct species, for the reasons above said, we have no clear 
distinct ideas. 

Sect. 13. The nominal essence that of the species, proved from water 
and ice. — But to return to the species of corporeal substances. If I should 
ask any one, whether ice and water were two distinct species of things, I 
doubt not but I should be answered in the affirmative : and it cannot be denied, 
but he that says they are two distinct species is in the right. But if an Eng- 
lishman, bred in Jamaica, who perhaps had never seen or heard of ice, com- 
ing into England in the winter, find the water he put in his basin at night, in a 
great part frozen in the morning, and not knowing any peculiar name it had, 
should call it hardened water ; I ask, whether this would not be a new species 
to him different from water] And, I think, it would be answered here, it 
would not be to him a new species, no more than congealed jelly, when it is 
cold, is a distinct species from the same jelly fluid and warm ; or than liquid 
gold in the furnace is a distinct species from hard gold in the hands of a work- 
man. And if this be so, it is plain, that our distinct species are nothing but 
distinct complex ideas, with distinct names annexed to them. It is true, 
every substance that exists, has its peculiar constitution, whereon depend 
those sensible qualities and powers we observe in it ; but the ranking of things 
into species, which is nothing but sorting them under several titles, is done 
by us according to the ideas we have of them : which, though sufficient to dis- 
tinguish them by names, so that we may be able to discourse of them, when 
we have them not present before us ; yet if we suppose it to be done by their 
real internal constitutions, and that things existing are distinguished by na- 
ture into species, by real essences, according as we distinguish them into spe- 
cies by names, we shall be liable to great mistakes. 

Sect. 14. Difficulties against a certain number of real essences. — To 
distinguish substantial beings into species, according to the usual supposition, 
that there are certain precise essences or forms of things, whereby all the in- 
dividuals existing are by nature distinguished into species, these things are 
necessary. 

Sect. 15. First, To be assured that nature, in the production of things, 
always designs them to partake of certain regulated established essences, 
which are to be the models of all things to be produced. This, in that crude 
sense it is usually proposed, would need some better explication, before it can 
be wholly assented to. 

Sect. 16. Secondly, It would be necessary to know whether nature always 
attains that essence it designs in the production of things. The irregular and 
monstrous births, that in divers sorts of animals have been observed, will 
always give us reason to doubt of one or both of these. 

Sect. 17. Thirdly, It ought to be determined, whether those we call mon- 
sters be really a distinct species, according to the scholastic notion of the 
word species ; since it is certain that everv thing that exists has its particular 



Ch. 6. NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 295 

constitution: and yet we find that some of these monstrous productions have 
lew or none of those qualities, which are supposed to result from, and accom- 
pany the essence of that species, from whence they derive their originals, and 
to which, by their descent, they seem to belong. 

fc?ECT. 18. Our nominal essences of substances not perfect collections of 
properties. — Fourthly, The real essences of those things, which we distin- 
guish into species, and as so distinguished we name, ought to be known ; i. e. 
we ought to have ideas of them. But since we are ignorant in these four 
points, the supposed real essences of things stand us not in stead for the dis- 
tinguishing substances into species. 

Sect. 19. Fifthly, The only imaginable help in this case would be, that 
having framed perfect complex ideas of the properties of things, flowing from 
their different real essences, we should thereby distinguish them into species. 
But neither can this be done ; for being ignorant of the real essence itself, it 
is impossible to know all those properties that flow from it, and are so an- 
nexed to it, that any one of them being away, we may certainly conclude, 
that that essence is not there, and so the thing is not of that species. We 
can never know what are the precise number of properties depending on the 
real essence of gold, any one of which failing, the real essence of gold, and 
consequently gold, would not be there, unless we knew the real essence of 
gold itself, and by that determined that species. By the word gold here, I must 
be understood to design a particular piece of matter ; v. g. the last guinea 
that was coined. For if it should stand here in its ordinary signification for 
that complex idea, which I or any one else calls gold ; i. e. for the nominal 
essence of gold, it would be jargon : so hard is it to show the various mean- 
ing and imperfection of words, when we have nothing else but words to do 
it by. 

Sect. 20. By all which it is clear, that our distinguishing substances into 
species by names, is not at all founded on their real essences ; nor can we 
pretend to range and determine them exactly into species, according to the 
internal essential differences. 

Sect. 21. But such a collection as our name stands for. — But since, as has 
been remarked, we have need of general words, though we know not the real 
essences of things ; all we can do is to collect such a number of simple ideas, 
as by examination we find to be united together in things existing, and thereof:' 
to make one complex idea: which, though it be not the real essence of any 
substance that exists, is yet the specific essence to which our name belongs, 
and is convertible with it ; by which we may at least try the truth of these 
nominal essences. For example, there be that say, that the essence of body 
is extension : if it be so, we can never mistake in putting the essence of any 
thing for the thing itself. Let us then in discourse put extension for body ; 
and when we would say that body moves, let us say that extension moves, 
and see how ill it will look. He that should say that one extension by im- 
pulse moves another extension, would, by the bare expression, sufficiently 
show the absurdity of such a notion. The essence of any thing, in respect 
of us, is the whole complex idea, comprehended and marked by that name ; 
and in substances, besides the several distinct simple ideas that make them 
up, the confused one of substance, or of an unknown support and cause of 
their union, is always a part : and therefore the essence of body is not bare 
extension, but an extended solid thing ; and so to say an extended solid thing 
moves, or impels another, is all one, and as intelligible as to say, body moves 
or impels. Likewise to say, that a rational animal is capable of conversa- 
tion, is all one as to say a man. But no one will say, that rationality is ca- 
pable of conversation, because it makes not the whole essence to which we 
give the name man. 

Sect. 22. Our abstract ideas are to us the measures of species ; instance 
in that of man. — There are creatures in the world that have shapes like ours, 
tut are hairy, and want language and reason. There are naturals among us 
that have perfectly our shape, but want reason, and some of them language 



296 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

too. There are creatures, it is said (" sit fides penes auc'torem," but there 
appears no contradiction that there should be such) that, with language and 
reason, and a shape in other things agreeing with ours, have hairy tails ; 
others where the males have no beards, and others where the females have. 
If it be asked whether these be all men or no, all of human species ] it is 
plain, the question refers only to the nominal essence : for those of them to 
whom the definition of the word man, or the complex idea signified by that 
name, agrees, are men, and the other not. But if the inquiry be made con- 
cerning the supposed real essence, and whether the internal constitution and 
frame of these several creatures be specifically different, it is wholly impossi- 
ble for us to answer, no part of that going into our specific idea ; only we 
have reason to think, that where the faculties or outward frame so much dif- 
fers, the internal constitution is not exactly the same. But what difference 
in the internal real constitution makes a specific difference, it is in vain to 
inquire ; whilst our measures of species be, as they are, only our abstract 
ideas, which we know ; and not that internal constitution, which makes no 
part of them. Shall the difference of hair only on the skin, be a mark of a 
different internal specific constitution between a changeling and a drill, when 
they agree in shape, and want of reason and speech 1 And shall not the want 
of reason and speech be a sign to us of different real constitutions and spe- 
cies between a changeling and a reasonable man 1 And so of the rest, if we 
pretend that the distinction of species or sorts is fixedly established by the 
real frame and secret constitutions of things. 

Sect. 23. Species not distinguished by generation. — Nor let any one say, 
that the power of propagation in animals by the mixture of male and female, 
and in plants by seeds, keeps the supposed real species distinct and entire. 
For granting this to be true, it would help us in the distinction of the species 
of things no farther than the tribes of animals and vegetables. What must 
we do for the rest 1 But in those too it is not sufficient : for if history lie 
not, women have conceived by drills ; and what real species, by that measure, 
such a production will be in nature, will be a new question : and we have 
reason to think this is not impossible, since mules and jumarts, the one from 
the mixture of an ass and a mare, and the other from the mixture of a bull 
and a mare, are so frequent in the world. I once saw a creature that was 
the issue of a cat and a rat, and had the plain marks of both about it ; wherein 
nature appeared to have followed the pattern of neither sort alone, but to have 
jumbled them both together. To which, he that shall add the monstrous pro- 
ductions that are so frequently to be met with in nature, will find it hard even 
in the race of animals, to determine by the pedigree of what species every 
animal's issue is : and be at a loss about the real essence, which he thinks cer- 
tainly conveyed by generation, and has alone a right to the specific name. 
But farther, if the species of animals and plants are to be distinguished only 
by propagation, must I go to the Indies to see the sire and dam of the one, 
and the plant from which the seed was gathered that produced the other, to 
know whether this be a tiger or that tea 1 

Sect. 24. Not by substantial forms. — Upon the whole matter, it is evident, 
that it is their own collections of sensible qualities, that men make the essen- 
ces of their several sorts of substances ; and that their real internal structures 
are not considered by the greatest part of men, in the sorting of them. Much- 
less were any substantial forms ever thought on by any, but those who have 
in this one part of the world learned the language of the schools : and yet 
those ignorant men, who pretend not any insight into the real essences, nor 
trouble themselves about substantial forms, but are content with knowing 
things one from another by their sensible qualities, are often better acquainted 
with their differences, can more nicely distinguish them from their uses, and 
better know what they may expect from each, than those learned quick-sighted 
men, who look so deep into them, and talk so confidently of something more 
hidden and essential. 

Sect. 25 The specific essences are made by the mind. — But supposing 



Ch. 6. NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 297 

that the real essences of substances were discoverable by those that would 
severely apply themselves to that inquiry, yet we could not reasonably think, 
that the ranking of things under general names was regulated by those inter- 
nal real constitutions, or any thing else but their obvious appearances : since lan- 
guages, in all countries, have been established long before sciences. So that they 
have not been philosophers, or logicians, or such who have troubled them- 
selves about forms and essences, that have made the general names that are 
in use among the several nations of men: but those more or less comprehen- 
sive terms have for the most part, in all languages, received their birth and 
signification from ignorant and illiterate people, who sorted and denominated 
things by those sensible qualities they found in them ; thereby to signify them, 
when absent, to others, whether they had an occasion to mention a sort or a 
particular thing. 

Sect. 26. Therefore very various and uncertain. — Since then it is evident, 
that we sort and name substances by their nominal, and not by their real es- 
sences ; the next thing to be considered is, how and by whom these essences 
come to be made. As to the latter, it is evident they are made by the mind, 
and not by nature : for were they nature's workmanship, they could not be 
so various and different in several men, as experience tells us they are. For 
if we will examine it, we shall not find the nominal essence of any one spe- 
cies of substances in all men the same : no, not of that, which of all others 
we are the most intimately acquainted with. It could not possible be, that 
the abstract idea to which the name man is given, should be different in se- 
veral men, if it were of nature's making; and that to one it should be "ani- 
mal rationale," and to another " animal implume bipes latis unguibus." He 
that annexes the name man to a complex idea made up of sense and sponta- 
neous motion, joined to a body of such a shape, has thereby one essence of 
the species man; and he that, upon further examination, adds rationality, has 
another essence of the species he calls man : by which means the same indi- 
vidual will be a true man to the one, which is not so to the other. I think, 
there is scarce any one will allow this upright figure, so well known, to be 
the essential difference of the species man; and yet how far men determine 
of the sorts of animals rather by their shape than descent, is very visible: 
since it has been more than once debated, whether several human foetuses 
should be preserved or received to baptism or no, only because of the differ- 
ence of their outward configuration from the ordinary make of children, with- 
out knowing whether they were not as capable of reason as infants cast in 
another mould : some whereof, though of an approved shape, are never capa- 
ble of as much appearance of reason all their lives as is to be found in an ape 
or an elephant, and never give any signs of being actuated by a rational soul. 
Whereby it is evident, that the outward figure, which only was found want- 
ing, and not the faculty of reason, which nobody could know would be want- 
ing in its due season, was made essential to the human species. The learned 
divine or lawyer must, on such occasions, renounce his sacred definition of 
" animal rationale," and substitute some other essence of the human species. 
Monsieur Menage furnishes us with an example worth the taking notice of on 
this occasion : " When the abbot of St Martin (says he) was bom, he had so 
little of the figure of a man, that it bespake him rather a monster. It was 
for some time under deliberation, whether he should be baptised or no. How- 
ever, he was baptised and declared a man provisionally [till time should show 
what he would prove.] Nature had moulded him so untowardly, that he was 
called all his life the Abbot Malotru, i. e. ill-shaped. He was of Caen." 
Menagiana, ~\$. This child, we see, was very near being excluded out of 
the species of man, barely by his shape. He escaped very narrowly as he 
was, and it is certain a figure a little more oddly turned had cast him, and he 
had been executed as a thing not to be allowed to pass for a man. And yet 
there can be no reason given, why, if the lineaments of his face had been a, 
little altered, a rational soul could not have been lodged in him ; why a visage, 
somewhat longer, or a nose flatter, or a wider mouth, could not have consist' 
2N 



298 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3 

ed, as well as the rest of his ill figure, with such a soul, such parts, as made 
him, disfigured as he was, capable to be a dignitary in the church. 

Sect. 27. Wherein, then, would I gladly know, consist the precise and 
immovable boundaries of that species ] It is plain, if we examine, there is 
no such thing made by nature, and established by her among men. The real 
essence of that, or any other sort of substances, it is evident we know not ; 
and therefore are so undetermined in our nominal essences, which we make 
ourselves, that if several men were to be asked concerning some oddly-shaped 
fcetus, as soon as born, whether it were a man or no, it is past doubt, one 
should meet with different answers : which could not happen, if the nominal 
essences, whereby we limit and distinguish the species of substances, were 
not made by man with some liberty, but were exactly copied from precise 
boundaries set by nature, whereby it distinguished all substances into certain 
species. Who would undertake to resolve what species that monster was of, 
which is mentioned by Licetus, lib. i. c. 3, with a man's head and hog's body ? 
or those other, which to the bodies of men had the heads of beasts, as dogs, 
horses, &c. 1 If any of these creatures had lived, and could have spoke, it 
would have increased the difficulty. Had the upper part to the middle been 
of human shape, and all below swine ; had it been murder to destroy it 1 Or 
must the bishop have been consulted, whether it were man enough to be ad- 
mitted to the font or no 1 as, I have been told, it happened in France some 
years since, in somewhat a like case. So uncertain are the boundaries of 
species of animals to us, who have no other measures than the complex ideas 
of our own collecting : and so far are we from certainly knowing what a man 
is ; though, perhaps, it will be judged great ignorance to make any doubt 
about it. And yet, I think, I may say, that the certain boundaries of that 
species are so far from being determined, and the precise number of simple 
ideas, which make the nominal essence, so far from being settled and per- 
fectly known, that very material doubts may still arise about it. And I ima- 
gine none of the definitions of the word man, which we yet have, nor de- 
scriptions of that sort of animal, are so perfect and exact, as to satisfy a con- 
siderate inquisitive person ; much less to obtain a general consent, and to 
be that which men would every where stick by, in the decision of cases, and 
determining of life and death, baptism or no baptism, in productions that 
might happen. 

Sect. 28. But not so arbitrary as mixed modes. — But though these nomi- 
nal essences of substances are made by the mind, they are not yet made so 
arbitrarily as those of mixed modes. To the making of any nominal essence, 
it is necessary, first, that the ideas whereof it consists have such a union as to 
make but one idea, how compounded soever ; secondly, that the particular idea 
so united be exactly the same, neither more nor less. For if two abstract 
complex ideas differ either in number or sorts of their component parts, they 
make two different, and not one and the same essence. In the first of these, 
the mind, in making its complex ideas of substances, only follows nature, and 
puts none together which are not supposed to have a union in nature. No- 
body joins the voice of a sheep with the shape of a horse, nor the colour of 
lead with the weight and fixedness of gold, to be the complex ideas of any 
real substances ; unless he has a mind to fill his head with chimeras, and his 
discourse with unintelligible words. Men observing certain qualities always 
joined and existing together, therein copied nature ; and of ideas so united, 
made their complex ones of substances. For though men may make what 
complex ideas they please, and give what names to them tiiey will ; yet if 
they will be understood, when they speak of things really existing, they must 
in some degree conform their ideas to. the things they would speak of; or else 
men's language will be like that of Babel ; and every man's words being in- 
telligible only to himself, would no longer serve to conversation, and the or- 
dinary affairs of life, if the ideas they stand for be not some way answering 
the common appearances and agreement of substances, as they really exist. 

•Sect. 29. Though very imperfect. — Secondly, though the mind of man, 



Ch. 6. NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 293 

in making- its complex ideas of substances, never puts any together that do 
not really or are not supposed to coexist ; and so it truly borrows that union 
from nature — yet the number it combines depends upon the various care, in- 
dustry, or fancy of him that makes it. Men generally content themselves 
with some few sensible obvious qualities ; and often, if not always, leave out 
others as material, and as firmly united, as those that they take. Of sensi- 
ble substances there are two sorts ; one of organized bodies, which are propa- 
gated by seed ; and in these, the shape is that which to us is the leading 
quality and most characteristical part that determines the species : and there- 
fore in vegetables and animals, an extended solid substance of such a certain 
figure usually serves the turn. For however some men seem to prize their 
definition of " animal rationale," yet should there a creature be found, that 
had language and reason, but partook not of the usual shape of a man, I be- 
lieve it would hardly pass for a man, how much soever it were " animal ra- 
tionale." And if Balaam's ass had, all his life, discoursed as rationally as he 
did once with his master, I doubt yet whether any one would have thought 
him worthy the name man, or allowed Mm to be of the same species with 
himself. As in vegetables and animals it is the shape, so in most other bodies, 
not propagated by seed, it is the colour we most fix on, and are most led by. 
Thus, where we find the colour of gold, we are apt to imagine all the other 
qualities, comprehended in our complex idea, to be there also : and we com- 
monly take these two obvious qualities, viz. shape and colour, for so presump- 
tive ideas of several species, that in a good picture we readily say this is a 
lion and that a rose ; this is a gold, and that a silver goblet, only by the dif- 
ferent figures and colours represented to the eye by the pencil. 

Sect. 30. Which yet serve for common converse. — But though this serves 
well enough for gross and confused conceptions, and inaccurate ways of talk- 
ing and thinking ; yet men are far enough from having agreed on the precise 
number of simple ideas, or qualities, belonging to any sort of things, signified 
by its name. Nor is it a wonder, since it requires much time, pains, and 
skill, strict inquiry, and long examination, to find out what and how many 
those simple ideas are, which are constantly and inseparably united in nature, 
and are always to be found together in the same subject. Most men, wanting 
either time, inclination, or industry enough for this, even to some tolerable 
degree, content themselves with some few obvious and outward appearances 
of things, thereby readily to distinguish and sort them for the common affairs 
of life ; and so, without farther examination, give them names, or take up the 
names already in use ; which, though in common conversation they pass well 
enough for the signs of some few obvious qualities coexisting, are yet far 
enough from comprehending, in a settled signification, a precise number of 
simple ideas ; much less all those which are united in nature. He that shall 
consider, after so much stir about genus and species, and such a deal of talk 
of specific differences, how few words we have yet settled definitions of, may 
with reason imagine that those forms, which there hath been so much noise 
made about, are only chimeras, which give us no light into the specific natures 
of things. And he that shall consider how far the names of substances are 
from having significations, wherein all who use them do agree, will have rea- 
son to conclude, that though the nominal essences of substances are all sup- 
posed to be copied from nature, yet they are all, or most of them very im- 
perfect; since the composition of those complex ideas are, in several men, 
very different ; and therefore that these boundaries of species are as men, and 
not as nature makes them, if at least there are in nature any such prefixed 
bounds. It is true that many particular substances are so made by nature, 
that they have agreement and likeness one with another, and so afford a foun- 
dation of being ranked into sorts. But the sorting of things by us, or the 
making' of determinate species, being in order to naming and comprehending 
them under general terms ; I cannot see how it can be properly said, that na- 
ture sets the boundaries of the species of things : or if it be so, our bounda- 
ries of species are not exactly conformable to those in nature. For we ha v 



300 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3, 

ing need of general names for present use, stay not for a perfect discovery of 
all those qualities which would best show us their most material differences 
and agreements ; but we ourselves divide them, by certain obvious appear- 
ances, into species, that we may the easier under general names communi- 
cate our thoughts about them. For having no other knowledge of any sub- 
stance, but of the simple ideas that are united in it ; and observing several 
particular things to agree with others in several of those simple ideas ; we 
make that collection our specific idea, and give it a general name ; that in re- 
cording our own thoughts, and in our discourse with others, we may in one 
short word design all the individuals that agree in that complex idea, without 
enumerating the simple ideas that make it up ; and so not waste our time and 
breath in tedious descriptions ; which we see they are fain to do, who would 
discourse of any new sort of things they have not yet a name for. 

Sect. 31. Essences of species under the same name very different. — But 
however these species of substances pass well enough in ordinary conversa- 
tion, it is plain that this complex idea, wherein they observe several indi- 
viduals to agree, is by different men made very differently ; by some more, 
and others less accurately. In some, this complex idea contains a greater, 
aud in others a smaller number of qualities ; and so is apparently such as the 
mind makes it. The yellow shining colour makes gold to children ; others 
add weight, malleableness, and fusibility ; and others yet other qualities, 
which they find joined with that yellow colour, as constantly as its weight 
and fusibility ; for in all these and the like qualities, one has as good a right 
to be put into the complex idea of that substance wherein they are all joined, 
as another. And therefore different men leaving out or putting in several 
simple ideas, which others do not, according to their various examination, 
skill, or observation of that subject, have different essences of gold ; which 
must therefore be of their own, and not of nature's making. 

Sect. 32. The more general our ideas are, the more incomplete and par- 
tial they are. — If the number of simple ideas, that made the nominal essence 
of the lowest species, or first sorting of individuals, depends on the mind of 
man variously collecting them, it is much more evident that they do so in the 
more comprehensive classes, which by the masters of logic are called genera. 
These are complex ideas designedly imperfect : and it is visible at first sight, 
that several of those qualities that are to be found in the things themselves 
are purposely left out of generical ideas. For as the mind, to make general 
ideas comprehending several particulars, leaves out those of time, and place, 
and such other, that make them incommunicable to more than one individual ; 
so to make other yet more general ideas, that may comprehend different sorts, 
it leaves out those qualities that distinguish them, and puts into its new col- 
lection only such ideas as are common to several sorts. The same conveni- 
ence that made men express several parcels of yellow matter coming from 
Guinea and Peru under one name, sets them also upon making of one name 
that may comprehend both gold and silver, and some other bodies of different 
sorts. This is done by leaving out those qualities which are peculiar to each 
sort, and retaining a complex idea made up of those that are common to them 
all ; to which the name metal being annexed, there is a genus constituted ; the 
essence whereof, being that abstract idea containing only malleableness and 
fusibility, with certain degrees of weight and fixedness, wherein some bodies 
of several kinds agree, leaves out the colour, and other qualities peculiar to 
gold and silver, and the other sorts comprehended under the name metal. 
Whereby it is plain, that men follow not exactly the patterns set them by na- 
ture, when they make their general ideas of substances ; since there is no body 
to be found, which has barely malleableness and fusibility in it, without other 
qualities as inseparable as those. But men in making their general ideas, 
seeing more the convenience of language and quick despatch, by short and 
comprehensive signs, than the true and precise nature of things as they exist, 
have, in the framing their abstract ideas, chiefly pursued that end which was 
to be furnished with store of general and variously comprehensive names. So 



Ch. 6. NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. SOI 

that in this whole business of genera and species, the genus, or more com- 
prehensive, is but a partial conception of what is in the species, and the 
species but a partial idea of what is to be found in each individual. If there- 
fore any one will think that a man, and a horse, and an animal, and a plant, 
&c. are distinguished by real essences made by nature, he must think nature 
to be very liberal of these real essences, making one for body, another for an 
animal, and another for a horse; and all these essences liberally bestowed 
upon Bucephalus. But if we would rightly consider what is done, in all these 
genera and species, or sorts, we should find that there is no new thing made, but 
only more or less comprehensive signs, whereby we may be enabled to ex- 
press, in a few syllables, great numbers of particular things, as they agree in 
more or less general conceptions, which we have framed to that purpose. In 
all which we may observe, that the more general term is always the name of 
a less complex idea ; and that each genus is but a partial conception of the 
species comprehended under it. So that if these abstract general ideas be 
thought to be complete, it can only be in respect of a certain established re- 
lation between them and certain names, which are made use of to signify 
them ; and not in respect of any thing existing, as made by nature. 

Sect. 33. This all accommodated to the end of speech. — This is adjusted 
to the true end of speech, which is to be the easiest and shortest way of com- 
municating our notions. For thus he, that would discourse of things as they 
agreed in the complex ideas of extension and solidity, needed but use the word 
body to denote all such. He that to these would join others, signified by the words 
life, sense, and spontaneous motion, needed but use the word animal, to signify 
all which partook of those ideas : and he that had made a complex idea of a 
body, with life, sense, and motion, with the faculty of reasoning, and a cer- 
tain shape joined to it, needed but use the short monosyllable man to express 
all particulars that correspond to that complex idea. This is the proper busi- 
ness of genus and species ; and this men do, without any consideration of 
real essences, or substantial forms, which come not within the reach of our 
knowledge, when we think of those things ; nor within the signification of our 
words, when we discourse with others. 

Sect. 34. Instance in casuaries. — Were I to talk with any one of a sort 
of birds I lately saw in St James's Park, about three or four feet high, with 
a covering of something between feathers and hair, of a dark brown colour, 
without wings, but in the place thereof two or three little branches coming 
down like sprigs of Spanish broom, long great legs, with feet only of three 
claws, and without a tail; I must make this description of it, and so may make 
others understand me : but when I am told that the name of it is cassowary, 
T may then use that word to stand in discourse for all my complex idea men- 
tioned in that description ; though by that word, which is now become a spe- 
cific name, I know no more of the real essence or constitution of that sort 
of animals than I did before : and knew probably as much of the nature of 
that species of birds, before I learned the name, as many Englishmen do of 
swans, or herons, which are specific names, very well known, of sorts of birds 
common m England. 

Sect. 35. Men determine the sorts. — From what has been said, it is evi- 
dent that men make sorts of things. For it being different essences alone 
that make different species, it is plain that they who make those abstract, 
ideas, which are the nominal essences, do thereby make the species, or sort. 
Should there be a body found, having all the other qualities of gold, except 
malleableness, it would no doubt be made a question whether it were gold or 
no, i. e. whether it were of that species. This could be determined only by 
that abstract idea to which every one annexed the name gold ; so that it would 
he true gold to him, and belong to that species, who included not malleable- 
ness in his nominal essence, signified by the sound gold ; and on the other 
side it would not be true gold, or of that species, to him who included mal- 
leableness in his specific idea. And who, I pray, is it that makes these di- 
verse species even under one and the same name, but men that make two 



^02 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

different abstract ideas, consisting not exactly of the same collection cf 
qualities? Nor is it a mere supposition to imagine that a body may exist, 
wherein the other obvious qualities of gold may be without malleablenesp ; 
since it is certain, that gold itself will be sometimes so eager (as artists call 
it) that it will as little endure the hammer as glass itself. What we have 
said of the putting in or leaving malleableness out of the complex idea the 
name gold is by any one annexed to, may be said of its peculiar weight, fixed- 
ness, and several other the like qualities : for whatsoever is left out, or put in, 
it is still the complex idea, to which that name is annexed, that makes the 
species ; and as any particular parcel of matter answers that idea, so the name 
of the sort belongs truly to it ; and it is of that species. And thus any thing 
is true gold, perfect metal. All which determination of the species, it is 
plain, depends on the understanding of man, making this or that complex idea. 

Sect. 36. Nature makes the similitude. — This then, in short, is the case . 
nature makes many particular tilings which do agree one with another, in 
many sensible qualities, and probably too in their internal frame and constitu- 
tion : but it is not this real essence that distinguishes them into species; it is 
men, who, taking occasion from the qualities they find united in them, and 
wherein they observe often several individuals to agree, range them into sorts, 
in order to their naming, for the convenience of comprehensive signs ; under 
which individuals, according to their conformity to this or that abstract idea, 
come to be ranked as under ensigns ; so that this is of the blue, that of the red 
regiment ; this a man, that a drill : and in this, I think, consists the whole 
business of genus and species. 

Sect. 37. I do not deny but nature, in the constant production of particu- 
lar beings, makes them not always new and various, but very much alike and 
of kin one to another : but I think it nevertheless true, that the boundaries 
of the species, whereby men sort them, are made by men ; since the essences 
of the species, distinguished by different names, are, as has been proved, of 
man's making, and seldom adequate to the internal nature of the things they 
are taken from. So that we may truly say, such a manner of sorting of 
things is the workmanship of men. 

Sect. 38. Each abstract idea is an essence. — One thing I doubt not but will 
seem very strange in this doctrine; which is, that from what has been said it 
will follow, that each abstract idea, with a name to it, makes a distinct species. 
But who can help it, if truth will have it so 1 For so it must remain till some- 
body can show us the species of things limited and distinguished by some- 
thing else, and let us see, that general terms signify not our abstract ideas, 
but something different from them. I would fain know why a shock and a 
hound are not as distinct species as a spaniel and an elephant. We have no 
other idea of the different essence of an elephant and a spaniel, than we 
have of the different essence of a shock and a hound ; all the essential difference, 
whereby we know and distinguish them one from another, consisting only in 
the different collection of simple ideas, to which we have given those differ- 
ent names. 

Sect. 39. Genera and species are in order to naming. — How much the 
making of species and genera is in order to general names, and how much 
general names are necessary, if not to the being, yet at least to the complet- 
ing of a species, and making it pass for such, will appear, besides what has 
been said above concerning ice and water, in a very familiar example. A 
silent and a striking watch are but one species to those who have but one 
name for them: but he that has the name "watch for one, and clock for the 
other, and distinct complex ideas to which those names belong, to him they 
are different species. It will be said, perhaps, that the inward contrivance 
and constitution is different between these two, which the watchmaker has a 
clear idea of. And yet it is plain, they are but one species to him, when he 
has but one name for them. For what is sufficient in the inward contrivance 
to make a new species 1 There are some watches that are made with four 
wheels, others with five: is this a specific difference to the workman! Some 



Ch. 6. NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 203 

have strings and physies, and others none; some have the balance loose, and 
others regulated by a spiral spring, and others by hog's bristles : are any or 
all of these enough to make a specific difference to the workman, that knows 
each of these, and several other different contrivances, in the internal con- 
stitutions of watches'? It is certain each of these hath a real difference from 
the rest ; but whether it be an essential, a specific difference or no, relates 
only to the complex idea to which the name watch is given : as long as they 
all agree in the idea which that name stands for, and that name does not as a 
genencal name comprehend different species under it, they are not essentially 
nor specifically different. But if any one will make minuter divisions from 
differences that he knows in the internal frame of watches, and to such pre- 
cise complex ideas, give names that shall prevail, they will then be new species 
to them, who have those ideas with names to them ; and can by those differ- 
ences distinguish watches into these several sorts, and then watch will be 
a generical name. But yet they would be no distinct species to men ignorant 
of clock-work and the inward contrivances of watches, who had no other 
idea but the outward shape and bulk, with the marking of the hours by the 
hand. For to them all those other names would be but synonymous terms 
for the same idea, and signify no more, nor no other thing but a watch. Just 
thus, I think, it is in natural things. Nobody will doubt that the wheels or 
springs (if I may so say) within, are different in a rational man and a change- 
ling, no more than that there is a difference in the frame between a drill and 
a changeling. But whether one or both these differences be essential or 
specifical, is only to be known to us, by their agreement or disagreement with 
the complex idea that the name man stands for : for by that alone can it be 
determined, whether one, or both, or neither of those be a man or no. 

Sect. 40. Species of artificial things less confused than natural. — From 
what has been before said, we may see the reason why in the species of arti- 
ficial things, there is generally less confusion and uncertainty, than in natu- 
ral. Because an artificial thing being a production of man, which the artifi- 
cer designed, and therefore weU knows the idea of, the name of it is supposed 
to stand for no other idea, nor to import any other essence than what is cer- 
tainly to be known, and easy enough to be apprehended. For the idea or 
essence of the several sorts of artificial things, consisting, for the most part, 
in nothing but the determinate figure of sensible parts ; and sometimes motion 
depending thereon, which the artificer fashions in matter, such as he finds for 
his turn ; it is not beyond the reach of our faculties to attain a certain idea 
thereof, and to settle the signification of the names, whereby the species of 
artificial things are distinguished with less doubt, obscurity, and equivocation, 
than we can in things natural, whose differences and operations depend upon 
contrivances beyond the reach of our discoveries. 

Sect. 41. Artificial things of distinct species. — I must be excused here 
if I think artificial things are of distinct species, as well as natural : since I 
find they are as plainly and orderly ranked into sorts, by different abstract 
ideas, with general names annexed to them, as distinct one from another as 
those of natural substances. For why should we think a watch and pistol 
as distinct species one from another, as a horse and a dog, they being ex- 
pressed in our minds by distinct ideas, and to others by distinct appellations ?- 

Sect. 42. Siibstances alone have proper names. — This is farther to be od- 
eerved concerning substances, that they alone of all our several sorts of ideas 
have particular or proper names, whereby the only particular thing is signi- 
fied. Because in simple ideas, modes, and relations, it seldom happens that 
men have occasion to mention often this or that particular when it is ab- 
sent. Besides, the greatest part of mixed modes, being actions which perish 
in their birth, are not capable of a lasting duration as substances, which are 
riie actors : and wherein the simple ideas that make up the complex ideas de- 
signed by the name, have a lasting union. 

Sect. 43. Difficulty to treat of words. — I must beg pardon of my reader, 
for having dwelt so long upon this subject, and perhaps with some obscurity 



£04 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3 

But I desire it may be considered how difficult it is to lead another by words 
into the thoughts of things stripped of those specific differences we give them : 
which things, if I name not, I say nothing ; and if I do name them, I thereby 
rank them into some sort or other, and suggest to the mind the usual abstract 
idea of that species, and so cross my purpose. For to talk of a man, and to 
lay by, at the same time, the ordinary signification of the name man, which 
is our complex idea usually annexed to it ; and bid the reader consider man as 
he is in himself, and as he is really distinguished from others in his internal 
constitution, or real essence, that is, by something, he knows not what, looks 
like trifling : and yet thus one must do who would speak of the supposed real 
essences and species of things, as thought to be made by nature, if it be but 
only to make it understood, that there is no such thing signified by the gene- 
ral names, which substances are called by, but because it is difficult by known 
familiar names to do this, give me leave to endeavour by an example, to make 
the different consideration the mind has of specific names and ideas a little 
more clear; and to show how the complex ideas of modes are referred some- 
times to archetypes in the minds of other intelligent beings ; or, which is the 
same, to the signification annexed by others to their received names ; and 
sometimes to no archetypes at all. Give me leave also to show how the 
mind always refers its ideas of substances, either to the substances them- 
selves, or to the signification of their names as to the archetypes ; and also 
to make plain the nature of species, or sorting of things, as apprehended, 
and made use of by us; and of the essences belonging to those species, which 
is perhaps of more moment, to discover the extent and certainty of our know- 
ledge than we at first imagine. 

Sect. 44. Instances of mixed modes in kinneah and niouph. — Let us sup- 
pose Adam in the state of a grown man, with a good understanding, but in a 
strange country, with all things new and unknown about him ; and no other 
faculties to attain the knowledge of them, but what one of this age has now. 
He observes Lamech more melancholy than usual, and imagines it to be from 
a suspicion he has of his wife Adah (whom he most ardently loved) that she 
had too much kindness for another man. Adam discourses these his thoughts 
to Eve, and desires her to take care that Adah commit not foliy : and in these 
discourses with Eve he makes use of these two new words, kinneah and 
niouph. In time Adam's mistake appears, for he finds Lamech's trouble pro- 
ceeded from having killed a man ; but yet the two names, kinneah and niouph ; 
the one standing for suspicion, in a husband, of his wife's disloyalty to him, 
and the other for the act of committing disloyalty, lost not their distinct sig- 
nifications. It is plain then that here were two distinct complex ideas of 
mixed modes, with names to them, two distinct species of action essentially 
different ; I ask wherein consisted the essences of these two distinct species 
of action'? And it is plain it consisted in a precise combination of simple 
ideas, different in one from the other. I ask, whether the complex idea in 
Adam's mind, which he called kinneah, were adequate or no 1 And it is plain 
it was, for it being a combination of simple ideas, which he, without any re- 
gard to any archetype, without respect to any thing as a pattern, voluntarily 
put together, abstracted, and gave the name kinneah to, to express in short 
to others, by that one sound, all the simple ideas contained and united in that 
complex one ; it must necessarily follow, that it was an adequate idea. His 
own choice having made that combination, it had all in it he intended it should, 
and so could not but be perfect, could not but be adequate, it being referred to no 
other archetype, which it was supposed to represent. 

Sect. 45. These words, kinneah and niouph, by degrees grew into com- 
mon use ; and then the case was somewhat altered. Adam's children had the 
same faculties, and thereby the same power that he had to make what com- 
plex ideas of mixed modes they pleased in their own minds : to abstract them, 
and make what sounds they pleased the signs of them : but the use of names 
being to make our ideas within us known to others, that cannot be done, but 
when the same sign stands for the same idea in two who would communicate 



Ch. 6. NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 305 

their thoughts, and discourse together. Those therefore of Adam's children 
that found these two words, kinneah and niouph, in familiar use, could not 
take them for insignificant sounds ; but must needs conclude, they stood for 
something, for certain ideas, abstract ideas, they being general names, which 
abstract ideas were the essences of the species distinguished by those names. 
If, therefore, they would use these words, as names of species already es- 
tablished and agreed on, they were obliged to conform the ideas, in their 
nincls, signified by these names, to the ideas that they stood for in other men's 
minds, as to their patterns and archetypes ;' and then indeed their ideas of 
these complex modes were liable to be inadequate, as being very apt (especi- 
ally those that consisted of combinations of many simple ideas) not to be ex- 
actly conformable to the ideas in other men's minds, using the same names ; 
though for this there be usually a remedy at hand, which is to ask the meaning 
of any word we understand not, of him that uses it: it being as impossible to 
know certainly what the words jealousy and adultery (which I think answer 
PXJp and liw) stand for in another man's mind, with whom I would discourse 
about them ; as it was impossible, in the beginning of language, to know 
what kinneah and niouph stood for in another man's mind, without explica- 
tion, they being voluntary signs in every one. 

Sect. 46. Instances of substances in zahab. — Let us now also consider, 
after the same manner, the names of substances in their first application. 
One of Adam's children, roving in the mountains, lights on a glittering sub- 
stance which pleases his eye ; home he carries it to Adam, who, upon con- 
sideration of it, finds it to be hard, to have a bright yellow colour, and an ex- 
ceeding great weight. These, perhaps, at first, are all the qualities he takes 
notice of in it : and abstracting this complex idea, consisting of a substance 
having that peculiar bright yellowness, and a weight very great in proportion 
to its bulk, he gives it the name zahab, to denote and mark all substances 
that have these sensible qualities in them. It is evident now that, in this 
case, Adam acts quite differently from what he did before in forming those 
ideas of mixed modes, to which he gave the names kinneah and niouph. 
For there he puts ideas together, only by his own imagination, not taken 
from the existence of any thing; and to them he gave names to denominate 
all things that should happen to agree to those his abstract ideas, without 
considering whether any such thing did exist or no : the standard there was 
of his own making. But in the forming his idea of this new substance, he 
takes the quite contrary course ; here he has a standard made by nature ; and 
therefore being to represent that to himself, by the idea he has of it, even 
when it is absent, he puts in no simple idea into his complex one, but what 
he has the perception of from the thing itself. He takes care that his idea 
be conformable to this archetype, and intends the name should stand for an 
idea so conformable. 

Sect. 47. This piece of matter, thus denominated zahab, by Adam, being 
quite different from any he had seen before, nobody, I think, will deny to. be 
a distinct species, and to have its peculiar essence ; and that the name zahab 
is the mark of the species, and a name belonging to all things partaking in 
that essence. But here it is plain, the essence Adam made the name zahab 
stand for, was nothing but a body hard, shining, yellow, and very heavy. 
But the inquisitive mind of man, not content with the knowledge of these, 
as I may say, superficial qualities, puts Adam on farther examination of this 
matter. He therefore knocks and beats it with flints, to see what was dis- 
coverable in the inside : he finds it yield to blows, but not easily separate into 
pieces : he finds it will bend without breaking. Is not now ductility to be 
added to his former idea, and made part of the essence of the species that 
name zahab stands fori Farther trials discover fusibility and fixedness. Are 
not they also, by the same reason that any of the others were, to be put into 
the complex idea signified by the name zahab 1 If not, what reason will there 
be shown more for the one than the other? If these must, then all the other 
properties, which any farther trials shall discover in this matter, ought, by the 
20 



306 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

same reason to make a part of the ingredients of the complex idea, which 
the name zahab stands for, and so be the essence of the species marked by 
that name. Which properties, because they are endless, it is plain, that the 
idea made after this fashion by this archetype, will be always inadequate. 

Sect 48. Their ideas imperfect, and therefore various. — But this is not 
all ; it would also follow, that the names of substances would not only have 
(as in truth they have) but would also be supposed to have different significa- 
tions, as used by different men, which would very much cumber the use of 
language. For if every distinct quality, that were discovered in any matter 
by any one, were supposed to make a necessary part of the complex idea, signi- 
ried by the common name given it, it must follow, that men must suppose the 
same word to signify different things in different men ; since they cannot 
doubt but different men may have discovered several qualities in substances 
of the same denomination, which others know nothing of. 

Sect. 49. Therefore to fix their species, a real essence is supposed. — To 
avoid this, therefore, they have supposed a real essence belonging to every 
species, from which these properties all flow, and would have their name of 
the species stand for that. But they not having any idea of that real essence 
in substance, and their words signifying nothing but the ideas they have, that 
which is done by this attempt, is only to put the name or sound in the place 
and stead of the thing having that real essence, without knowing what the 
real essence is ; and this is that which men do, when they speak of species 
of things, as supposing them made by nature, and distinguished by real 
essences. 

Sect. 50. Which supposition is of no use. — For let us consider, when 
we affirm that all gold is fixed, either it means that fixedness is a part of the 
definition, part of the nominal essence the word gold stands for ; and so this 
affirmation, all gold is fixed, contains nothing but the signification of the 
term gold. Or else it means, that fixedness not being a part of the defini- 
tion of the word gold, is a property of that substance itself; in which case, 
it is plain, that the word gold stands in the place of a substance, having the 
real essence of a species of things made by nature. In which way of sub- 
stitution it has so confused and uncertain a signification, that though this 
proposition, gold is fixed, be in that sense an affirmation of something real, 
yet it is a truth will always fail us in its particular application, and so is of 
no real use nor certainty. For let it be ever so true, that all gold, i. e. all 
that has the real essence of gold, is fixed, what serves this for, whilst we 
know not, in this sense, what is or is not gold 1 for if we know not the real 
essence of gold, it is impossible we should know what parcel of matter lias 
that essence, and so whether it be true gold or no. 

Sect. 51. Conclusion. — To conclude : what liberty Adam had at first to 
make any complex ideas of mixed modes, by no other patterns but by his 
own thoughts, the same have all men ever since had. And the same necessity 
of conforming his ideas of substances to things without him, as to arche- 
types made by nature, that Adam was under, if he would not wilfully impose 
upon himself; the same are all men ever since under too. The same liberty 
also that Adam had of affixing any new name to any idea, the same has any 
one still (especially the beginners of languages, if we can imagine any such) 
but only with this difference, that in places where men in society have al- 
ready established a language among them, the significations of words are very 
warily and sparingly to be altered : because men being furnished already with 
names for their ideas, and common use having appropriated known names to 
certain ideas, an affected misapplication of them cannot but be very ridicu- 
lous. He that hath new notions will perhaps venture sometimes on the coin- 
ing of new terms to express them : but men think it aboldness, and it is uncer- 
tain whether common use will ever make them pass for current. But in com- 
munication with others, it is necessary that we conform the ideas we make 
the vulgar words of any language stand for, to their known proper significa- 
tions (which I have explained at large already) or else to make known that 
new signification we apply them to. 



Ch. 7. OF PARTICLES. bu7 

CHAPTER VII. 

OF PARTICLES. 

Sect. 1. Particles connect parts, or whole sentences together. — Besides 
words which are names of ideas in the mind, there are a great many others 
that are made use of to signify the connexion that the mind gives to ideas, 
or propositions, one with another. The mind, in communicating its thought 
to others, does not only need signs of the ideas it has then before it, but others 
also, to show or intimate some particular action of its own at that time re- 
lating to those ideas. This it does several ways ; as is, and is not, are the 
general marks of the mind, affirming or denying. But besides affirmation or 
negation, without which there is in words no truth or falsehood, the mind 
does, in declaring its sentiments to others, connect not only the parts of pro- 
positions, but whole sentences one to another, with their several relations 
and dependencies, to make a coherent discourse. 

Sect. 2. In them consists the art of well speaking. — The words, where- 
by it signifies what connexion it gives to the several affirmations and nega- 
tions, that it unites in one continued reasoning or narration, are generally 
called particles ; and it is in the right use of these that more particularly con- 
sists the clearness and beauty of a good style. To think well, it is not enough 
that a man has ideas clear and distinct in his thoughts, nor that he observes 
the agreement or disagreement of some of them ; but he must think in train, 
and observe the dependence of his thoughts and reasonings upon one another. 
And to express well such methodical and rational thoughts, he must have 
words to show what connexion, restriction, distinction, opposition, emphasis, 
&c. he gives to each respective part of his discourse. To mistake in any of 
these, is to puzzle, instead of informing, his hearer ; and therefore it is that 
those words which are not truly by themselves the names of any ideas, are 
of such constant and indispensable use in language, and do much contribute 
to men's well expressing themselves. 

Sect. 3. They show what relation the mind gives to its own thoughts. — 
This part of grammar has been perhaps as much neglected as some others 
over-diligently cultivated. It is easy for men to write, one after another, of 
cases and genders, moods and tenses, gerunds and supines : in these, and the 
like, there has been great diligence used ; and particles themselves, in some 
languages, have been, with great show of exactness, ranked into their several 
orders. But though prepositions and conjunctions, &c. are names well known 
in grammar, and the particles contained under them carefully ranked into their 
distinct subdivisions ; yet he who would show the right use of particles, and 
what significancy and force they have, must take a little more pains, en- 
ter into his own thoughts, and observe nicely the several postures of his mind 
in discoursing. 

Sect. 4. Neither is it enough, for the explaining of these words, to render 
them, as is usual in dictionaries, by words of another tongue which come 
nearest to their signification : for what is meant by them is commonly as hard 
to be understood in one as another language. They are all marks of some 
action, or intimation of the mind ; and therefore to understand them rightly, 
the several views, postures, stands, turns, limitations, and exceptions, and 
several other thoughts of the mind, for which we have either none, or very 
deficient names, are diligently to be studied. Of these there is a great variety, 
much exceeding the number of particles that most languages have to express 
them by ; and therefore it is not to be wondered that most of these particles 
have divers, and sometimes almost opposite significations. In the Hebrew 
tongue there is a particle, consisting but of one single letter, of which there 
• re reckoned up, as I remember, seventy, I am sure above fifty, several signifi 
nations. 



308 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

Sect. 5. Instance in but. — But is a particle, none more familiar in our 
language ; and he that says it is a discretive conjunction, and that it answers 
sed in Latin, or mais in French, thinks he has sufficiently explained it. But 
it seems to me to intimate several relations the mind gives to the several 
propositions or parts of them, which it joins by this monosyllable. 

First, " but to say no more :" here it intimates the stop of the mind in the 
course it was going, before it came quite to the end of it. 

Secondly, " I saw but two plants :" here it shows, that the mind limits the 
sense to what is expressed, with a negation of all other. 

Thirdly, " you pray; but it is not that God would bring you to the true re- 
ligion." 

Fourthly, " but that he would confirm you in your own." The first of these buts 
intimates a supposition in the mind of something otherwise than it should be ; 
the latter shows, that the mind makes a direct opposition between that, and 
what goes before it. 

Fifthly, " all animals have sense ; but a dog is an animal;" here it signifies 
little more but that the latter proposition is joined to the former, as the minor 
of a syllogism. 

Sect. 6. This matter but lightly touched here.— Ho these, I doubt not, 
might be added a great many other significations of this particle, if it were 
my business to examine it in its full latitude, and consider it in all the places 
it is to be found : which if one should do, I doubt whether in all those man- 
ners it is made use of, it would deserve the title of discretive which gramma- 
rians give to it. But I intend not here a full explication of this sort of signs. 
The instances I have given in this one, may give occasion to reflect on their 
ase and force in language, and lead us into the contemplation of several ac- 
tions of our minds in discoursing, which it has found a way to intimate to 
others by these particles ; some whereof constantly, and others in certain 
constructions, have the sense of a whole sentence contained in them. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OF ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE TERMS. 

Sect. 1. Abstract terms not predicable one of another , and why. — The 
ordinary words of language, and our common use of them, would have given 
us light into the nature of our ideas, if they had been but considered with at- 
tention. The mind, as has been shown, has a power to abstract its ideas, and 
so they become essences, general essences, whereby the sorts of things are 
distinguished. Now each abstract idea being distinct, so that of any two 
the one can never be the other, the mind will, by its intuitive knowledge,.perceive 
their difference ; and therefore in propositions no two whole ideas can ever 
be affirmed one of another. This we see in the common use of language, 
which permits not any two abstract words, or names of abstract ideas, to be 
affirmed one of another. For how near of kin soever they may seem to be, 
and how certain soever it is, that man is an animal, or rational, or white, yet 
every one at first hearing perceives the falsehood of these propositions ; hu- 
manity is animality, or rationality, or whiteness : and this is as evident as any 
of the most allowed maxims. All our affirmations then are only inconcrete, 
which is the affirming, not one abstract idea to be another, but one abstract 
idea to be joined to another ; which abstract ideas, in substances, may be of 
any sort ; in all the rest, are little else but of relations ; and in substances, 
the most frequent are of powers ; v. g. " a man is white," signifies, that the 
thing that has f he essence of a man, has also in it the essence T>f whiteness, 
which is nothing but a power to produce the idea of whiteness in one, whose 
eyes can discover ordinary objects ; or, " a man is rational," signifies that 



Ch. 8. ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE TERMS. 309 

the same thing that hath the essence of a man, hath also in it the essence of 
rationality, i. e. a power of reasoning. 

Sect. 2. They show the difference of our ideas. — This distinction of 
names shows us also the difference of our ideas : for if we observe them, we 
shall find that our simple ideas have all abstract as well as concrete names ; 
the one whereof is (to speak the language of grammarians) a substantive, the 
other an abjective ; as whiteness, white ; sweetness, sweet. The like also 
holds in our ideas of modes and relations, as justice, just ; equality, equal ; 
only with this difference, that some of the concrete names of relations, among 
men, chiefly are substantives ; as paternitas, pater ; whereof it were easy to 
render a reason. But as to our ideas of substances, we have very few or no 
abstract names at all. For though the schools have introduced animalitas, 
humanitas, corporietas, and some others ; yet they hold no proportion with 
that infinite number of names of substances, to which they never were ridicu- 
lous enough to attempt the coining of abstract ones ; and those few that the 
schools forged, and put into the mouths of their scholars, could never yet get 
admittance into common use, or obtain the license of public approbation. 
Which seems to me at least to intimate the confession of all mankind, that 
they have no ideas of the real essences of substances, since they have not 
names for such ideas ; which no doubt they would have had, had not their 
consciousness to themselves of their ignorance of them kept them from so 
idle an attempt. And therefore, though they had ideas enough to distinguish 
gold from a stone, and metal from wood ; yet they but timorously ventured on 
such terms, as aurietas and saxietas, metallietas and lignietas, or the like 
names, which should pretend to signify the real essences of those substances, 
wiiereof they knew they had no ideas. And indeed it was only the doctrine of 
substantial forms, and the confidence of mistaken pretenders to a knowledge 
that they had not, which first coined, and then introduced animalitas, and 
humanitas, and the like ; which yet went very little farther than their own 
schools, and could never get to be current among understanding men. In- 
deed, humanitas was a word familiar among the Romans, but in a far different 
sense, and stood not for the abstract essence of any substance ; but was the 
abstracted name of a mode, and its concrete, humanus, not homo. 



CHAPTER IX. 

OF THE IMPERFECTION OF WORDS. 

Sect. 1. Words are used for recording and communicating our thoughts. 
— From what has been said in the foregoing chapters, it is easy to perceive 
what imperfection there is in language, and how the very nature of words 
makes it almost unavoidable for many of them to be doubtful and uncertain 
in their significations. To examine the perfection or imperfection of words 
it is necessary first to consider their use and end: for as they are more or legs 
fitted to attain that, so are they more or less perfect. We have, in the former 
part of this discourse, often upon occasion mentioned a double use of words. 

First, one for the recording of our own thoughts. 

Secondly, the other for the communicating of our thoughts to others. 

Sect. 2. Any words will serve for recording. — As to the first of these,' 
for the recording our own thoughts for the help of our own memories, whereby, 
as it were, we talk to ourselves, any words will serve the turn. For since 
sounds are voluntary and indifferent signs of any ideas, a man may use what 
words he pleases, to signify his own ideas to himself; and there will be no 
imperfection in them, if he constantly use the same sign for the same idea, 
for then he cannot fail of having his meaning understood, wherein consists 
the right use and perfection of language. 



310 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

Sect. 3. Communication by words civil or philosophical. — As to com- 
munication of words, that too has a double use. 

I. Civil. 

II. Philosophical. 

First, by their civil use, I mean such a communication of thoughts and 
ideas by words, as may serve for the upholding common conversation and 
commerce, about the ordinary affairs and conveniences of civil life, in the 
societies of men one among another. 

Secondly, by the philosophical use of words, I mean such a use of them as 
may serve to convey the precise notions of things, and to express, in general 
propositions, certain and undoubted truths, which the mind may rest upon, 
and be satisfied with, in its search after true knowledge. These two uses are 
very distinct ; and a great deal less exactness will serve in the one than in the 
other, as we shall see in what follows. 

Sect. 4. The imperfection of words in the doubtfulness of their signifi- 
cation. — The chief end of language in communication being to be understood, 
words serve not well for that end, neither in civil nor philosophical discourse, 
when any word does not excite in the hearer the same idea which it stands 
for in the mind of the speaker. Now since sounds have no natural connexion 
with our ideas, but have all their signification from the arbitrary imposition 
of men, the doubtfulness and uncertainty of their signification, which is the 
imperfection we here are speaking of, has its cause more in the ideas they 
stand for, than in any incapacity there is in one sound more than in another, 
to signify any idea : for in that regard they are all equally perfect. 

That then which makes doubtfulness and uncertainty in the signification 
of some more than other words, is the difference of ideas they stand for. 

Sect. 5. Causes of their imperfection. — Words having naturally no sig- 
nification, the idea which each stands for must be learned and retained by 
those who would exchange thoughts, and hold intelligible discourse with 
others in any language. But this is hardest to be done where, 

First, the ideas they stand for are very complex, and made up of a great 
number of ideas put together. 

Secondly, where the ideas they stand for have no certain connexion in na- 
ture ; and so no settled standard, any where in nature existing, to rectify and 
adjust them by. 

Thirdly, when the signification of the word is referred to a standard, which 
standard is not easy to be known. 

Fourthly, where the signification of the word, and the real essence of the 
thing, are not exactly the same. 

These are difficulties that attend the signification of several words that are 
intelligible. Those which are not intelligible at all, such as names standing 
for any simple ideas, which another has not organs or faculties to attain, — as 
the names of colours to a blind man, or sounds to a deaf man, — need not 
here be mentioned. 

In all these cases we shall find an imperfection in words, which I shall 
more at large explain, in their particular application to our several sorts of 
ideas ; for if we examine them, we shall find that the names of mixed modes 
are most liable to doubtfulness and imperfection, for the two first of these 
reasons ; and the names of substances chiefly for the two latter. 

Sect. 6. The names of mixed modes doubtful. — First, the names of mixed 
modes are many of them liable to great uncertainty and obscurity in their 
signification. 

First, because the ideas they stand for are so complex. — I. Because of 
that great composition these complex ideas are often made up of. To make 
words serviceable to the end of communication, it is necessary (as has been 
said) that they excite in the hearer exactly the same idea they stand for m 
the mind of the speaker. Without this, men fill one another's heads with 
noise and sounds ; but convey not thereby their thoughts, and lay not before 



Ch. 9. IMPERFECTION OF WORDS. 311 

one another their ideas, which is the end of discourse and language. But 
when a word stands for a very complex idea that is compounded and decom- 
pounded, it is not easy for men to form and retain that idea so exactly as to 
make the name in common use stand for the same precise idea, without any 
the least variation. Hence it comes to pass, that men's names of very com- 
pound ideas, such as for the most part are moral words, have seldom, in two 
different men, the same precise signification; since one man's complex idea 
seldom agrees with another's, and often differs from his own, from that which 
he had yesterday, or will have to-morrow. 

Sect. 7. Secondly, because they have no standards. — II. Because the 
names of mixed modes, for the most part, want standards in nature, whereby 
men may rectify and adjust their significations ; therefore they are very various 
and doubtful. They are assemblages of ideas put together at the pleasure of 
the mind, pursuing its own ends of discourse, and suited to its own notions ; 
whereby it designs not to copy any thing really existing, but to denominate 
and rank things, as they come to agree with those archetypes or forms it has 
made. He that first brought the word sham, or wheedle, or banter, in use, 
put together, as he thought fit, those ideas he made it stand for ; and as it is 
with any new names of modes, that are now brought into any language, so it 
was with the old ones, when they were first made use of. Names therefore 
that stand for collections of ideas which the mind makes at pleasure, must 
needs be of doubtful signification, when such collections are nowhere to be 
found constantly united in nature, nor any patterns to be shown whereby men 
may adjust them. What the word murder, or sacrilege, &c. signifies, can 
never be known from things themselves : there be many of the parts of those 
complex ideas which are not visible in the action itself; the intention of the 
mind, or the relation of holy things, which make a part of murder or sacrilege, 
have no necessary connexion with the outward and Visible action of him that 
commits either: and the pulling the trigger of the gun, with which the murder 
is committed, and is all the action that perhaps is visible, has no natural con- 
nexion with those other ideas that make up the complex one, named murder. 
They have their union and combination only from the understanding, which 
unites them under one name : but uniting them without any rule or pattern, 
it cannot be but that the signification of the name that stands for such volun- 
tary collections should be often various in the minds of different men, who 
have scarce any standing rule to regulate themselves and their notions by, in 
such arbitrary ideas. 

Sect. 8. Propriety not a sufficient remedy. — It is true, common use, that 
is the rule of propriety, may be supposed here to afford some aid, to settle the 
signification of language ; and it cannot be denied but that in some measure 
it does. Common use regulates the meaning of words pretty well for com- 
mon conversation ; but nobody having an authority to establish the precise 
signification of words, nor determine to what ideas any one shall annex them, 
common use is not sufficient to adjust them to philosophical discourses ; there 
being scarce any name of any very complex idea (to say nothing of others) 
which in common use has not a great latitude, and which, keeping within 
the bounds of propriety, may not be made the sign of far different ideas. Be- 
sides, the rule and measure of propriety itself being nowhere established, it 
is often matter of dispute whether this or that way of using a word be pro- 
priety of speech or no. From all which it is evident, that the names of such 
kind of very complex ideas are naturally liable to this imperfection, to be of 
doubtful and uncertain signification; and even in men that have a mind to un- 
derstand one another, do not always stand for the same idea in speaker and 
hearer. Though the names glory and gratitude be the same in every man's 
mouth through a whole country, yet the complex collective idea, which every 
one thinks on, or intends by that name, is apparently very different in men 
using the same language. 

Sect. 9. The way of learning these names contributes also to their doubt- 
fulness. — The way also wherein the names of mixed modes are ordinarily 
(earned, does not a little contribute to the doubtfulness of their signification. 



312 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

For if we will observe how children learn languages, we shall find that to 
make them understand what the names of simple ideas, or substances, stand 
for, people ordinarily show them the thing whereof they would have them 
have the idea ; and then repeat to them the name that stands for it, as white, 
sweet, milk, sugar, cat, dog. But as for mixed modes, especially the most 
material of them, moral words, the sounds are usually learned first ; and then 
to know what complex ideas they stand for, they are either beholden to the 
explication of others, or (which happens for the most part) are left to their 
own observation and industry ; which being little laid out in the search of the 
true and precise meaning of names, these moral words are in most men's 
mouths little more than bare sounds ; or when they have any, it is for the 
most part but a very loose and undetermined, and consequently obscure 
and contused signification. And even those themselves, who have with 
more attention settled their notions, do yet hardly avoid the inconveni- 
ence, to have them stand for complex ideas, different from those 
which other, even intelligent and studious men, make them the signs of. 
Where shall one find any, either controversial debate, or familiar discourse, 
concerning honour, faith, grace, religion, church, &c. wherein it is not easy to 
observe the different notions men have of them! which is nothing but this, that 
they are not agreed in the signification of those words, nor have in their minds 
the same complex ideas winch they make them stand for: and so aU the con- 
tests that follow thereupon are only about the meaning of a sound. And 
hence we see, that in the interpretation of laws, whether divine or human, 
there is no end ; comments beget comments, and explications make new mat- 
ter for explications ; and of limiting, distinguishing, varying the signification 
of these moral words, there is no end. These ideas of men's making are, by 
men still having the same power, multiplied in infinitum. Many a man who 
was pretty well satisfied of the meaning of a text of scripture, or clause in the 
code, at first reading, has by consulting commentators quite lost the sense of 
it, and by those elucidations given rise or increase to his doubts, and drawn 
obscurity upon the place. I say not this, that I think commentaries needless ; 
but to show how uncertain the names of mixed modes naturally are, even in 
the mouths of those who had both the intention and the faculty of speaking as 
clearly as language was capable to express their thoughts. 

Sect. 10. Hence unavoidable obscurity in ancient authors. — What ob- 
scurity this has unavoidably brought upon the writings of men, who have lived 
in remote ages and in different countries, it will be needless to take notice ; 
since the numerous volumes of learned men, employing their thoughts that 
way, are proofs more than enough to show what attention, study, sagacity, and 
reasoning are required, to find out the true meaning of ancient authors. But 
there being no writings we have any great concernment to be very solicitous 
pJbout the meaning of, but those that contain either truths we are required to 
believe, or laws we are to obey, and draw inconveniences on us when we mis- 
take or transgress; we may be less anxious about the sense of other authors, 
who writing but their own opinions, we are under no greater necessity to know 
chem, than they to know ours. Our good or evil depending not on their decrees, 
we may safely be ignorant of their notions : and therefore, in the reading of 
them, if they do not use their words with a due clearness and perspicuity, we 
may lay them aside, and, without any injury done them, resolve thus with our- 
selves : 

' Si non vis intelligi, debes negligi." 

Sect. 11. Names of substances of doubtful signification. — If the signifi- 
cation of the names of mixed modes are uncertain, because there be no real 
standards existing in nature to which those ideas are referred, and by which 
they may be adjusted, the names of substances are of a doubtful signification, 
for a contrary reason, viz. because the ideas they stand for are supposed con- 
formable to the reality of things, and are referred to standards made by nature. 
In our ideas of substances, we have not the liberty, as in mixed modes, to frame 
what combinations we think fit, to be the characteristic al notes to rank and de- 



Ch. 9. IMPERFECTION OF WORDS. 313 

nominate things by. In these we must follow nature, suit our complex ideas 
to real existences, and regulate the signification of their names by the things 
themselves, if we will have our names to be the signs of them, and stand for 
them. Here, it is true, we have patterns to follow, but patterns that will 
make the signification of their names very uncertain ; for names must be of a 
very unsteady and various meaning, if the ideas they stand for be referred to 
standards without us, that either cannot be known at all, or can be known but 
imperfectly and uncertainly. 

Sect. 12. Names of substances referred, first, to real essences that cannot 
be known. — The names of substances have, as has been shown, a double re- 
ference in their ordinary use. 

First, sometimes they are made to stand for, and so their signification is 
supposed to agree to, the real constitution of things, from which all their 
properties flow, and in which they all centre. But this real constitution, (or 
as it is apt to be called) essence, being utterly unknown to us, any sound that 
is put to stand for it must be very uncertain in its application ; and it will be 
impossible to know what things are, or ought to be, called a horse, or anatomy, 
when those words are put for real essences that we have no ideas of at all. 
And therefore, in this supposition, the names of substances being referred to 
standards that cannot be know, their significations can never be adjusted and 
established by those standards. 

Sect. 13. Secondly, to coexisting qualities, which are known but imper- 
fectly. — The simple ideas that are found to coexist in substances being 
that which their names immediately signify, these, as united in the several 
sorts of things, are the proper standards to which their names are referred, 
and by which their significations may be best rectified. But neither will these 
archetypes so well serve this purpose, as to leave these names without very 
various and uncertain significations : because these simple ideas that coexist, 
and are united in the same subject, being very numerous, and having all an 
equal right to go into the complex specific idea, which the specific name is to 
stand for; men, though they propose to themselves the very same subject to 
consider, yet frame very different ideas about it ; and so the name they use 
for it unavoidably comes to have, in several men, very different significations. 
The simple qualities which make up the complex ideas, being most of them 
powers, in relation to changes, which they are apt to make in, or receive 
from other bodies, are almost infinite. He that shall but observe what a great 
variety of alterations any one of the baser metals is apt to receive from the 
different application only of fire ; and how much a greater number of changes 
any of them will receive in the hands of a chemist, by the application of 
other bodies ; will not think it strange that I count the properties of any sort 
of bodies not easy to be collected, and completely known by the ways of in- 
quiry, which our faculties are capable of. They being therefore at least so 
many that no man can know the precise and definite number, they are differ- 
ently discovered by different men, according to their various skill, attention, 
and ways of handling ; who therefore cannot choose but have different ideas 
of the same substance, and therefore make the signification of its common 
name very various and uncertain. For the complex ideas of substances be- 
ing made up of such simple ones as are supposed to coexist in nature, every 
one has a right to put into his complex ideas those qualities he has found to be 
united together. For though in the substance of gold one satisfied himself 
with colour and weight, yet another thinks solubility in aq. regia as neces- 
sary to be joined with that colour in his idea of gold as any one does its fusi- 
bility ; solubility in aq. regia being a quality as constantly joined with its 
colour and weight, as fusibility, or any other; others put into it ductility or 
fixedness, &c. as they have been taught by tradition or experience. Who of 
all these has established the right signification of the word gold 1 or who shall 
be the judge to determine] Each has its standard in nature, which he appeals 
to ; and with reason thinks he has the same right to put into his complex idea, 
2 P 



314 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3 

signified by the word gold, those qualities which upon trial he has found 
united, as another, who has not so well examined, has to leave them out ; or 
a third, who has made other trials, has to put in others. For the union in na- 
ture of these qualities being the true ground of their union in one complex 
idea, who can say one of them has more reason to be put in, or left out, than 
another'? From hence it will always unavoidably follow, that the complex 
ideas of substances, in men using the same name for them, will be very vari- 
ous ; and so the significations of those names very uncertain. 

Sect. 14. Thirdly, to coexisting qualities which are known but imperfectly. 
Besides, there is scarce any particular thing existing, which, in some of it 
simple ideas, does not communicate with a greater, and in others a less num- 
ber of particular beings : who shall determine, in this case, which are those 
that are to make up the precise collection that is to be signified by the specific 
name; or can, with any just authority, prescribe which obvious or common 
qualities are to be left out ; or which more secret, or more particular are to be 
put into the signification of the name of any substance] All which together 
seldom or never fail to produce that various and doubtful signification in the 
names of substances, which causes such uncertainty, disputes, or mistakes, 
when we come to a philosophical use of them. 

Sect. 15. With this imperfection, they may serve for civil, but not well 
for philosophical use. — It is true, as to civil and common conversation, 
the general names of substances, regulated in their ordinary signification by 
some obvious qualities, (as by the shape and figure in things of known semi- 
nal propagation, and in other substances, for the most part, by colour, joined 
with some other sensible qualities) do well enough to design the things men 
would be understood to speak of; and so they usually conceive well enough 
the substances meant by the word gold, or apple, to distinguish the one from 
the other. But in philosophical inquiries and debates, where general truths 
are to be established, and consequences drawn from positions laid down — 
there the precise signification of the names of substances will be found, not 
only not to be well established, but also very hard to be so. For example, he 
that shall make malleableness, or a certain degree of fixedness, a part of his 
complex idea of gold, may make propositions concerning gold, and draw- 
consequences from them, that will truly and clearly follow from gold, taken 
in such a signification ; but yet such as another man can never be forced to 
admit, nor be convinced of their truth, who makes not malleableness, or the 
same degree of fixedness, part of that complex idea, that the name gold, in his 
use of it, stands for. 

Sect. 16. Instance liquor. — This is a natural, and almost unavoidable im- 
perfection in almost all the names of substances, in all languages whatsoever, 
which men will easily find, when once passing from confused or loose notions, 
they come to more strict and close inquiries : for then they will be convinced 
how doubtful and obscure those words are in their signification, which in or- 
dinary use appeared very clear and determined. I was once in a meeting of 
very learned and ingenious physicians, where by chance there arose a ques- 
tion, whether any liquor passed through the filaments of the nerves. The 
debate having been managed a good while, by variety of arguments on both 
sides, I (who had been used to suspect that the greatest parts of disputes 
were more about the signification of words than a real difference in the con- 
ception of things) desired, that before they went any farther on in this dis- 
pute, they would first examine, and establish among them, what the word 
liquor signified. They at first were a little surprised at the proposal ; and 
had they been persons less ingenious, they might perhaps have taken it for a 
very frivolous or extravagant one ; since there was no one there that thought 
not himself to understand very perfectly what the word liquor stood for ; 
which I think, too, none of the most perplexed names of substances. How- 
ever, they were pleased to comply with my motion ; and, upon examination, 
found that the signification of that word was not so settled and certain as 
Jiey had all imagined, but that each of them made it a sign of a different 



Ch. 9. IMPERFECTION OF WORDS. 315 

complex idea. This made them believe that the main of their dispute was 
about the signification of that term ; and that they differed very little in their 
opinions concerning some fluid and subtle matter passing through the con- 
duits of the nerves, though it was not so easy to agree whether it was to be 
called liquor or no — a thing which, when considered, they thought it not worth 
the contending about. 

Sect. 17. Instance Gold. — How much this is the case in the greatest part 
of disputes that men are engaged so hotly in, I shall perhaps have an occa- 
sion in another place to take notice. Let us only here consider a little more 
exactly the fore-mentioned instance of the word gold, and we shall see how 
hard it is precisely to determine its signification. I think all agree to make 
it stand for a body of a certain yellow shining colour ; which being the idea 
to which children have annexed that name, the shining yellow part of a pea- 
cock's tail is properly to them gold. Others finding fusibility, joined with 
that yellow colour in certain parcels of matter, make of that combination a 
complex idea, to which they give the name gold, to denote a sort of sub- 
stances ; and so exclude from being gold all such yellow shining bodies as 
by fire will be reduced to ashes ; and admit to be of that species, or to be 
comprehended under that name gold, only such substances, as having that 
shining yellow colour, will by fire be reduced to fusion, and not to ashes. 
Another, by the same reason, adds the weight ; which being a quality as 
straightly joined with that colour as its fusibility, he thinks has the same reason 
to be joined in its idea, and to be signified by its name ; and therefore the other 
made up of body, of such a colour and fusibility, to be imperfect ; and so on 
of all the rest : wherein no one can show a reason why some of the insepara- 
ble qualities, that are always united in nature, should be put into the nominal 
essence, and others left out ; or why the word gold, signifying that sort of 
body the ring on his finger is made of, should determine that sort, rather by 
its colour, weight, and fusibility, than by its colour, weight and solubility in 
aq. regia : since the dissolving of it by that liquor is as inseparable from it 
as the fusion by fire ; and they are both of them nothing but the relation which 
that substance has to two other bodies, which have a power to operate differ- 
ently upon it. For by what right is it that fusibility comes to be a part of 
the essence signified by the word gold, and solubility but a property of it ; or 
why is its colour part of the essence, and its malleableness but a property ? 
That which I mean is this : that these being all but properties depending on 
its real constitution, and nothing but powers, either active or passive, in re- 
ference to other bodies ; no one has authority to determine the signification of 
the word gold (as referred to such a body existing in nature) more to one 
collection of ideas to be found in that body than to another : whereby the sig- 
nification of that name must unavoidably be very uncertain ; since, as has been 
said, several people observe several properties in the same substance ; and, I 
think, I may say nobody at all. And therefore we have but very imperfect de- 
scriptions of things, and words have very uncertain significations. 

Sect. 18. The names of simple ideas the least doubtful. — From what has 
been said, it is easy to observe what has been before remarked, viz. That 
the names of simple ideas are, of all others, the least liable to mistakes, and 
that for these reasons. First, because the ideas they stand for, being each 
but one single perception, are much easier got, and more clearly retained, 
than the more complex ones ; and therefore are not liable to the uncertainty 
which usually attends those compounded ones of substances and mixed modes, 
in which the precise number of simple ideas, that maKe them up, are not 
easily agreed, and so readily kept in the mind : and secondly, because they 
are never referred to any other essence, but barely that perception they im- 
mediately signify ; which reference is that which renders the signification of 
the names of substances naturally so perplexed, and gives occasion to so many 
disputes. Men that do not perversely use their words, or on purpose set 
themselves to cavil, seldom mistake, in any language which they are acquain- 
ted with, the use and signification of the names of simple ideas : white and 



316 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3 

sweet, yellow and bitter, carry a very obvious meaning with them, which ev- 
ery one precisely comprehends, or easily perceives he is ignorant of, and seeks 
to be informed. But what precise collection of simple ideas modesty or fru- 
gality stand for in another's use, is not so certainly known. And however 
we are apt to think we well enough know what is meant by gold or iron ; yet 
the precise complex idea others make them the signs of, is not so certain ; 
and I believe it is very seldom- that, in speaker and hearer, they stand for ex- 
actly the same collection : which must needs produce mistakes and disputes, 
when they are made use of in discourses, wherein men have to do with uni- 
versal propositions, and would settle in their minds universal truths, and con- 
sider the consequences that follow from them. 

Sect. 19. And next to them, simple modes. — By the same rule, the names 
of simple modes are, next to those of simple ideas, least liable to doubt and 
uncertainty, especially those of figure and number, of which men have so 
clear and distinct ideas. Who ever, that had a mind to understand them, 
mistook the ordinary meaning of seven, or a triangle 1 And in general the 
least compounded ideas in every kind have the least dubious names. 

Sect. 20. The most doubtful are the names of very compounded mixed 
modes and substances. — Mixed modes, therefore, that are made up but of a 
few and obvious simple ideas, have usually names of no very uncertain sig- 
nification ; but the same names of mixed modes, which comprehend a great 
number of simple ideas, are commonly of a very doubtful and undetermined 
meaning, as has been shown. The names of substances, being annexed to 
ideas that are neither the real essences nor exact representations of the pat- 
terns they are referred to, are liable yet to greater imperfection and uncer- 
tainty, especially when we come to a philosophical use of them. 

Sect. 21. Why this imperfection charged upon words. — The great dis- 
order that happens in our names of substances, proceeding for the most part 
from our want of knowledge, and inability to penetrate into their real consti- 
tutions, it may probably be wondered, why I charge this as an imperfection 
ratner upon our words than understandings. This exception has so much 
appearance of justice, that I think myself obliged to give a reason why I have 
followed this method. I must confess, then, that when I first began this dis- 
course of the understanding, and a good while after, I had not the least 
thought that any consideration of words was at all necessary to it. But when, 
having passed over the original and composition of our ideas, I began to ex- 
amine the extent and certainty of our knowledge, I found it had so near a 
connexion with words, that, unless their force and manner of signification 
were first well observed, there could be very little said clearly and pertinently 
concerning knowledge ; which being conversant about truth, had constantly 
to do with propositions ; and though it terminated in things, yet it was for 
the most part so much by the intervention of words, that they seemed scarce 
separable from our general knowledge. At least, they interpose themselves 
so much between our understandings and the truth, which it would contem- 
plate and apprehend, that, like the medium through which visible objects pass, 
their obscurity and disorder do not seldom cast a mist before our eyes, and 
impose upon our understandings. If we consider, in the fallacies men put 
upon themselves as well as others, and the mistakes in men's disputes and 
notions, how great a part is owing to words, and their uncertain or mistaken 
significations — we shall have reason to think this no small obstacle in the 
way to knowledge ; which, I conclude, we are the more carefully to be warned 
of, because it has been so far from being taken notice of as an inconvenience, 
that the arts of improving it have been made the business of men's study, and 
obtained the reputation of learning and subtility, as we shall see in the fol- 
lowing chapter. But I am apt to imagine, that were the imperfections ot 
language, as the instruments of knowledge, more thoroughly weighed, a great 
many of the controversies that make such a noise in the world, would of them- 
selves cease ; and the way to knowledge, and perhaps peace, too, lie a great 
deal opener than it does. 



Ch. 9. IMPERFECTION OF WORDS. 317 

Sect. 22. This should teach us moderation, in imposing our own sense 
of old authors. — Sure I am, that the signification of words, in all languages, 
depending very much on the thoughts, notions, and ideas of him that uses 
them, must unavoidably be of great uncertainty to men of the same language 
and country. This is so evident in the Greek authors, that he that shall 
peruse their writings, will find in almost every one of them a distinct lan- 
guage; though the same words. But when to this natural difficulty in every 
country there shall be added different countries and remote ages, wherein the 
speakers and writers had very different notions, tempers, customs, ornaments, 
and figures of speech, &c. every one of which influenced the signification of 
their words then, though to us now they are lost and unknown ; it would be- 
come us to be charitable one to another in our interpretations or misunder- 
standing of those ancient writings; which, though of great concernment to 
be understood, are liable to the unavoidable difficulties of speech, which (if 
we except the names of simple ideas, and some very obvious things) is not 
capable, without a constant defining the terms, of conveying the sense and 
intention of the speaker, without any manner of doubt and uncertainty to the 
hearer. And in discourses of religion, law, and morality, as they are matters 
of the highest concernment, so there will be the greatest difficulty. 

Sect. 23. The volumes of interpreters and commentators on the old and 
new Testaments are but too manifest proofs of this. Though every thing said 
in the text be infallibly true, yet the reader may be, nay cannot choose but be, 
very fallible in the understanding of it. Nor is it to be wondered, that the 
will of God, when clothed in words, should be liable to that doubt and uncer- 
tainty which unavoidably attends that sort of conveyance ; when even his 
Son, whilst clothed in flesh, was subject to all the frailties and inconveniences 
of human nature, sin excepted : and we ought to magnify his goodness, that 
he hath spread before all the world such legible characters of his works and 
providence, and given all mankind so sufficient a light of reason, that they to 
whom this written word never came, could not (whenever they set themselves 
to search) either doubt of the being of a God, or of the obedience due to him. 
Since then the precepts of natural religion are plain, and very intelligible to 
all mankind, and seldom come to be controverted ; and other revealed truths, 
which are conveyed to us by books and languages, are liable to the common 
and natural obscurities and difficulties incident to words ; methinks it would 
become us to be more careful and diligent in observing the former, and less 
magisterial, positive, and imperious in imposing our own sense and interpre- 
tations of the latter. 



CHAPTER X. 

OF THE ABUSE OF WORDS. 

Sect. 1. Abuse of words. — Besides the imperfection that is naturally m 
language, and the obscurity and confusion that is so hard to be avoided in the 
use of words, there are several wilful faults and neglects which men are guilty 
of in this way of communication, whereby they render these signs less clear 
and distinct in their signification than naturally they need to be. 

Sect. 2. First, words without any, or without clear ideas. — First, in this 
kind, the first and most palpable abuse is, the using of words without clear 
and distinct ideas ; or, which is worse, signs without any thing signified. Of 
these there are two sorts. 

I. One may observe, in all languages, certain words, that, if they be ex- 
amined, will be found, in their first original and their appropriate use, not to 
stand for any clear and distinct ideas. These, for the most part, the several 
sects of philosophy and religion have introduced. For their authors or pro 



318 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

moters, either affecting something singular and out of the way of common 
apprehension, or to support some strange opinions, or cover some weakness 
of their hypothesis, seldom fail to coin new words, and such as, when they 
come to be examined, may justly be called insignificant terms. For having 
either had no determinate collection of ideas annexed to them, when they 
were first invented, or at least, such as, if well examined, will be found incon- 
sistent; it is no wonder if afterwards, in the vulgar use of the same party, 
they remain empty sounds, with little or no signification, among those who 
think it enough to have them often in their mouths, as the distinguishing 
characters of their church, or school, without much troubling their heads to 
examine what are the precise ideas they stand for. 1 shall not need here to 
heap up instances ; every man's reading and conversation will sufficiently 
furnish him : or if he wants to be better stored, the great mint-masters of this 
kind of terms, I mean the schoolmen and metaphysicians, (under which, I 
think, the disputing natural and moral philosophers of these latter ages may 
be comprehended) have wherewithal abundantly to content him. 

Sect. 3. — II. Others there be who extend this abuse yet farther ; who 
take so little care to lay by words, which, in their primary notation, have 
scarce any clear and distinct ideas which they are annexed to ; that, by an 
unpardonable negligence, they familiarly use words, which the propriety of 
language has affixed to very important ideas, without any distinct meaning at 
all. Wisdom, glory, grace, &c. are words frequent enough in every man's 
mouth ; but if a great many of those who use them should be asked what they 
mean by them, they would be at a stand, and not know what to answer : a 
plain proof, that though they have learned those sounds, and have them ready 
at their tongue's end, yet there are no determined ideas laid up in their minds, 
which are to be expressed to others by them. 

Sect. 4. Occasioned by learning names before the ideas they belong to. 
— Men having been accustomed from their cradles to learn words, which are 
easily got and retained, before they knew or had framed the complex ideas to 
which they were annexed, or which were to be found in the things they were 
thought to stand for ; they usually continue to do so all their lives ; and, with- 
out taking the pains necessary to settle in their minds determined ideas, they 
use their words for such unsteady and confused notions as they have, contenting 
themselves with the same words other people use : as if their very sound neces- 
sarily carried with it constantly the same meaning. This, though men make a 
shift with, in the ordinary occurrences of life, where they find it necessary to be 
understood, and therefore they make signs till they are so ; yet this insignificancy 
in their words, when they come to reason concerning either their tenets' or 
interest, manifestly fills their discourse with abundance of empty, unintelli- 
gible noise and jargon; especially in moral matters, where the words for the 
most part standing for arbitrary and numerous collections of ideas not 
regularly and permanently united in nature, their bare sounds are often only 
thought on, or at least very obscure and uncertain notions annexed to them. 
Men take the words they find in use among their neighbours ; and that they 
may not seem ignorant what they stand for, use them confidently, without 
much troubling their heads about a certain fixed meaning : whereby, besides 
the ease of it, they obtain t'his advantage, that as in such discourses they seldom 
are in the right, so they are seldom to be convinced that they are in the 
wrong ; it being all one to go about to draw those men out of their mistakes, 
who have no settled notions, as to dispossess a vagrant of his habitation, who 
has no settled abode. This I guess to be so ; and every one may observe in 
himself and others whether it be or no. 

Sect. 5. Unsteady application of them. — Secondly, another great abuse 
of words is inconsistency in the use of them. It is hard to find a discourse 
written upon any subject, especially of controversy, wherein one shall not ob- 
serve, if he read with attention, the same words (and those commonly the most 
material in the discourse, and upon which the argument turns) used some- 
times for one collection of simple ideas, and sometimes for another, which is 



Ch. 10. ABUSE OF WORDS. 319 

a perfect abuse of language. Words being intended for signs of my ideas, to 
make them known to others, not by any natural signification, but by a voluntary 
imposition — it is plain cheat and abuse, when I make them stand sometimes for 
one thing and sometimes for another ; the wilful doing whereof can be imputed 
to nothing but great folly, or greater dishonesty : and a man, in his accounts 
with another, may, with as much fairness, make the characters of numbers 
stand sometimes for one and sometimes for another collection of units, (v. g. 
this character 3 stands sometimes for three, sometimes for four, and some- 
times for eight) as in his discourse, or reasoning, make the same words stand for 
different collections of simple ideas. If men should do so in their reckonings, 
I wonder who would have to do with them 1 One who would speak thus, in 
the affairs and business of the world, and call eight sometimes seven, and 
sometimes nine, as best served his advantage, will presently have clapped 
upon him one of the two names men are commonly disgusted with : and yet 
in arguings and learned contests, the same sort of proceedings passes com- 
monly for wit and learning : but to me it appears a greater dishonesty than 
the misplacing of counters in the casting up a debt ; and the cheat the greater, 
by how much truth is of greater concernment and value than money. 

Sect. 6. Affected obscurity by wrong application. — Thirdly, another 
abuse of language is an affected obscurity, by either applying old words to 
new and unusual significations, or introducing new and ambiguous terms, 
without defining either ; or else putting them so together, as may confound 
their ordinary meaning. Though the peripatetic philosophy has been most 
eminent in this way, yet other sects have not been wholly clear of it. There 
are scarce any of them that are not cumbered with some difficulties (such is 
the imperfection of human knowledge) which they have been fain to cover 
with obscurity of terms, and to confound the signification of words, which, 
like a mist before people's eyes, might hinder their weak parts from being 
discovered. That body and extension, in common use, stand for two distinct 
ideas, is plain to any one that will but reflect a little : for were their signifi- 
cation precisely the same, it would be proper, and as intelligible, to say the 
body of an extension, as the extension of a body : and yet there are those who 
find it necessary to confound their signification. To this abuse, and the mis- 
chiefs of confounding the signification of words, logic and the liberal sciences, 
as they have been handled in the schools, have given reputation ; and the 
admired art of disputing hath added much to the natural imperfection of lan- 
guages, whilst it has been made use of and fitted to perplex the signification 
of words, more than to discover the knowledge and truth of things : and he 
that will look into that sort of learned writings, will find the words there 
much more obscure, uncertain, and undeterminable in their meaning than they 
are in ordinary conversation. 

Sect. 7. Logic and dispute have much contributed to this. — This is un- 
avoidably to be so, where men's parts and learning are estimated by their skill 
in disputing. And if reputation and reward shall attend these conquests, 
which depend mostly on the fineness and niceties of words, it is no wonder 
if the wit of man, so employed, should perplex, involve, and subtilize the 
signification of sounds, so as never to want something to say, in opposing or 
defending any question: the victory being adjudged not to him who had truth 
on his side, but the last word in the dispute. 

Sect. 8. Calling it subtility. — This, though a very useless skill, and that 
which I think the direct opposite to the ways of knowledge, hath yet passed 
hitherto under the laudable and esteemed names of subtility and acuteness ; 
and has had the applause of the schools, and encouragement of one part of the 
learned men of the world. And no wonder, since the philosophers of old 
(the disputing and wrangling philosophers I mean, such as Lucian wittingly 
and with reason taxes) and the schoolmen since, aiming at glory and esteem 
for their great and universal knowledge, (easier a great deal to be pretended 
to than really acquired) found this a good expedient to cover their ignorance 
with a curious, and inexplicable web of perplexed words, and urocure to them- 



320 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

selves the admiration of others by unintelligible terms, the apter to produce 
wonder, because they could not be understood : whilst it appears in all his- 
tory, that these profound doctors were no wiser, nor more useful, than their 
neighbours ; and brought but small advantage to human life, or the societies 
wherein they lived ; unless the coining of new words, where they produced 
no new things to apply them to, or the perplexing or obscuring the significa- 
tion of old ones, and so bringing all things into question and dispute, were 
a thing profitable to the life of man, or worthy commendation and reward. 

Sect. 9. This learning very little benefits society. — For notwithstanding 
these learned disputants, these all-knowing doctors, it was to the unscholas- 
tic statesman that the governments of the world owed their peace, defence, 
and liberties ; and from the illiterate and condemned mechanic (a name of 
disgrace) that they received the improvements of useful arts. Nevertheless, 
this artificial ignorance and learned gibberish prevailed mightily in these last 
ages, by the interest and artifice of those who found no easier way to that 
pitch of authority and dominion they have attained, than by amusing the men 
of business and ignorant, with hard words, or employing the ingenious and 
idle in intricate disputes about unintelligible terms, and holding them perpetu- 
ally entangled in that endless labyrinth. Besides, there is no such way to 
gain admittance, or give defence to strange and absurd doctrines, as to guard 
them round about with legions of obscure, doubtful, and undefined words : 
which yet make these retreats more like the dens of robbers, or holes of foxes, 
than the fortresses of fair warriors ; which, if it be hard to get them out of, 
it is not for the strength that is in them, but the briers and thorns, and the 
obscurity of the thickets they are beset with. For untruth being unacceptable 
to the mind of man, there is no other defence left for absurdity but obscurity. 

Sect. 10. But destroys the instruments of knowledge and communication. 
— Thus learned ignorance, and this art of keeping, even inquisitive men, from 
true knowledge, hath been propagated in the world, and hath much perplexed, 
whilst it pretended to inform, the understanding. For we see that other well- 
meaning and wise men, whose education and parts had not acquired that acute- 
ness, could intelligibly express themselves to one another ; and in its plain 
use make a benefit of language. But though unlearned men well enough un- 
derstood the words white and black, &c. and had constant notions of the ideas 
signified by those words ; yet there were philosophers found, who had learn- 
ing and subtilty enough to prove, that snow was black ; i. e. to prove that 
white was black. Whereby they had the advantage to destroy the instru- 
ments and means of discourse, conversation, instruction, and society ; whilst 
with great art and subtilty they did no more but perplex and confound the 
signification of words ; and thereby render language less useful than the real 
defects of it had made it; a gift, which the illiterate had not attained to. 

Sect. 11. As useful as to confound the sound of the letters. — These 
learned men did equally instruct men's understandings, and profit their lives, 
as he who should alter the signification of known characters, and by a subtle 
device of learning, far surpassing the capacity of the illiterate, dull, and vul- 
gar, should, in his writings, show that he could put A for B, and D for E, &c. 
to the no small admiration and benefit of his reader : it being as senseless to 
put black, which is a word agreed on to stand for one sensible idea, to put it, 
I say, for another, or the contrary idea, i. e. to call snow black, as to put this 
mark A, which is a character agreed on to stand for one modification of sound, 
made by a certain motion of the organs of speech, for B, which is agreed on 
to stand for another modification of sound, made by another certain motion of 
the organs of speech. 

Sect. 12. This art has perplexed religion and justice. — Nor hath this 
mischief stopped in logical niceties, or curious empty speculations ; it hath 
invaded the great concernments of human life and society, obscured and per- 
plexed the material truths of law and divinity ; brought confusion, disorder, 
a.nd uncertainty into the affairs of mankind ; and if not destroyed, yet in a 
great measure rendered useless, these two great rules, religion and justice 



Ch. 10. ABUSE OF WORDS. 321 

What have the greatest part of the comments and disputes upon the laws ol 
God and man served for, but to make the meaning more doubtful, and per- 
plex the sense] What have been the effects of those multiplied curious 
distinctions and acute niceties, but obscurity and uncertainty, leaving the 
words more unintelligible, and the reader more at a loss ? How else comes 
it to pass that princes, speaking or writing to their servants, in their ordinary 
commands, are easily understood ; speaking to their people, in their laws, are 
not so ] And, as I remarked before, doth it not often happen, that a man of 
an ordinary capacity very well understands a text, or a law, that he reads, till 
he consults an expositor, or goes to counsel ; who, by that time he hath done 
explaining them, makes the words signify either nothing at all, or what he 
pleases. 

Sect. 13. And ought not to pass for learning. — Whether any by-interests 
of these professions have occasioned this, I will not here examine ; but I leave 
it to be considered, whether it would not be well for mankind, whose concern 
ment it is to know things as they are, and to do what they ought, and not to 
spend their lives in talking about them, or tossing words to and fro ; whether 
it would not be well, I say, that the use of words were made plain and direct, 
and that language, which was given us for the improvement of knowledge and 
bond of society, should not be employed to darken truth, and unsettle people's 
rights; to raise mists, and render unintelligible both morality and religion'? 
Or that, at least, if this will happen, it should not be thought learning or 
knowledge to do so? 

*Sect. 14. Taking them for things. — Fourthly, another great abuse of 
words, is the taking them for things. This, though it in some degree con- 
cerns all names in general, yet more particularly affects those of substances. 
To this abuse those men are most subject who most confine their thoughts to 
any one system, and give themselves up into a firm belief of the perfection 
of any received hypothesis; whereby they come to be persuaded, that the 
terms of that sect are so suited to the nature of things, that they perfectly 
correspond with their real existence. Who is there, that has been bred up 
in the peripatetic philosophy, who does not think the ten names, under which 
are ranked the ten predicaments, to be exactly conformable to the nature of 
things 1 Who is there of that school that is not persuaded, that substantial 
forms, vegetative souls, abhorrence of a vacuum, intentional species, &c. are 
something real'? These words men have learned from their very entrance 
upon knowledge, and have found their masters and systems lay great stress 
upon them ; and therefore they cannot quit the opinion, that they are con- 
formable to nature, and are the representations of something that really ex- 
ists. The Platonists have their soul of the world, and the Epicureans then 
endeavour towards motion in their atoms, when at rest. There is scarce any 
sect in philosophy has not a distinct set of terms, that others understand not; 
but yet this gibberish, which, in the weakness of human understanding, serves 
so well to palliate men's ignorance, and cover their errors, comes, by familiar 
use among those of the same tribe, to seem the most important part of lan- 
guage, and of all other the terms the most significant. And should aerial 
and eetherial vehicles come once, by the prevalency of that doctrine, to be 
generally received any where, no doubt those terms would make impressions 
on men's minds, so as to establish them in the persuasion of the reality of 
such things, as much as peripatetic forms and intentional species have here- 
tofore done. 

Sect. 15. Instance, in matter.— Row much names taken for things are 
apt to mislead the understanding, the attentive reading of philosophical wri- 
ters would abundantly discover ; and that, perhaps, in words little suspected 
of any such misuse. I shall instance in one only, and that a very familiar 
one : how many intricate disputes have there been about matter, as if there 
were some such thing really in nature, distinct from body ; as it is evident 
\;he word matter stands for an idea distinct from the idea of body ! For if the 

deas these two terms stood for were precisely the same, they might indiffer~ 
2 *°c 



322 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

ently, in all places, be put one for another. But we see, that though it be 
proper to say, there is one matter of all bodies, one cannot say there is one 
body of all matters : we familiarly say, one body is bigger than another ; but 
it sounds harsh (and I think is never used) to say, one matter is bigger than 
another. Whence comes this, then 1 viz. from hence, that though matter and 
body be not really distinct, but wherever there is the one there is the other ; 
yet matter and body stand for two different conceptions, whereof the one is 
incomplete, and but a part of the other. For body stands for a solid extended 
figured substance, whereof matter is but a partial and more confused concep- 
tion, it seeming to me to be used for the substance and solidity of body, 
without taking in its extension and figure : and therefore it is that, speaking 
of matter, we speak of it always as one, because in truth it expressly contains 
nothing but the idea of a solid substance, which is every where the same, every 
where uniform. This being our idea of matter, we no more conceive or 
speak of different matters in the world, than we do of different solidities ; 
though we both conceive and speak of different bodies, because extension and 
figure are capable of variation. But since solidity cannot exist without exten- 
sion and figure, the taking matter to be the name of something really existing 
under that precision, has no doubt produced those obscure and unintelligible 
discourses and disputes, which have filled the heads and books of philosophers, 
concerning materia 'prima; which imperfection or abuse, how far it may con- 
cern a great many other general terms, I leave to be considered. This, I 
thmk, I may at least say, that we should have a great many fewer disputes 
in the world, if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas 
only, and not for things themselves. For when we argue about matter, or any 
the like term, we truly argue only about the idea we express by that sound, 
whether that precise idea agree to any thing really existing in nature or no. 
And if men would tell what ideas they make their words stand for, there could 
not be half that obscurity or wrangling, in the search or support of truth, that 
there is. 

Sect. 16. This makes errors lasting. — But whatever inconvenience fol- 
lows from this mistake of words, this I am sure, that by constant and familiar 
use, they charm men into notions far remote from the truth of things. It 
would be a hard matter to persuade any one that the words which his father 
or schoolmaster, the parson of the parish, or such a reverend doctor used, sig- 
nified nothing that really existed in nature ; which, perhaps, is none of the 
least causes that men are so hardly drawn to quit their mistakes, even in opin- 
ions purely philosophical, and where they have no other interest but truth. 
For the words they have a long time been used to, remaining firm in their 
minds, it is no wonder that the wrong notions annexed to them should not 
be removed. 

Sect. 17. Setting them for what they cannot signify. — Fifthly, another 
abuse of words, is the setting them in the place of things which they do or 
can by no means signify. We may observe, that in the general names of sub- 
stances, whereof the nominal essences are only known to us, when we put 
them into propositions, and affirm or deny any thing about them, we do most 
commonly tacitly suppose, or intend they should stand for, the real essence of 
a certain sort of substances. For when a man says gold is malleable, he 
means and would insinuate something more than this, that what I call gold is 
malleable, (though truly it amounts to no more) but would have this under- 
stood, viz. that gold, i. e. what has the real essence of gold, is malleable , 
which amounts to thus much, that malleableness depends on, and is insepara- 
ble from, the real essence of gold. But a man not knowing wherein that real 
essence consists, the connexion in his mind of malleableness is not truly with 
an essence he knows not, but only with the sound gold he puts for it. Thus 
when we say, that animal rationale is, and animal implume bipes latis un- 
guibus is not a good definition of a man ; it is plain we suppose the name man 
in this case to stand for the real essence of a species, and would signify, that 
a rational animal better described that real essence, than a two-legged animal 



Ch. 10. ABUSE OF WORDS. 323 

with broad nails, and without feathers. For else, why might not Plato as 
properly make the word avS^tto;, or man, stand for his complex idea, made 
up of the idea of a body, distinguished from others by a certain shape and 
other outward appearances, as Aristotle make the complex idea, to which he 
gave the name avowee, or man, of body and the faculty of reasoning joined 
together, unless the name av6§a>7ro? , or man, were supposed to stand for some- 
thing else than what it signifies ; and to be put in the place of some other 
thing than the idea a man professess he would express by it 1 

Sect. 18. v. g. Putting them for the real essences of substances. — It is 
true, the names of substances would be much more useful, and propositions 
made in them much more certain, were the real essences of substances the ideas 
in our minds, which those words signified. And it is for want of those real es- 
sences that our words convey so little knowledge or certainty in our dis- 
courses about them : and therefore the mind, to remove that imperfection as 
much as it can, makes them, by a secret supposition, to stand for a thing, 
having that real essence, as if thereby it made some nearer approaches to it. 
For though the word man or gold signifying nothing truly but a complex 
idea of properties united together in one sort of substances ; yet there is 
scarce any body in tne use of these words, but often supposes each of those 
names to stand for a thing having the real essence, on which these properties 
depend. Which is so far from diminishing the imperfections of our words, 
that by a plain abuse it adds to it, when we would make them stand for some- 
thing, which, not being in our complex idea, the name we use can no ways 
be the sign of. 

Sect. 19. Hence we think every change of our idea in substances not to 
change the species. — This shows us the reason why in mixed modes any of 
the ideas that make the composition of the complex one, being left out or 
changed, it is allowed to be another thing, i. e. to be of another species : ay 
is plain in chance-medley, man-slaughter, murder, parricide, &c The reason 
whereof is, because the complex idea signified by that name is the real as 
well as nominal essence ; and there is no secret reference of that name to 
any other essence but that. But in substances it is not so. For though in 
that called gold one puts into his complex idea what another leaves out, and 
vice versa ; yet men do not usually think that therefore the species is changed : 
because they secretly in their minds refer that name, and suppose it an- 
nexed to a real immutable essence of a thing existing, on which those pro- 
perties depend. He that adds to his complex idea of gold that of fixedness and 
solubility in aq. regia, which he put not in it before, is not thought to have 
changed the species ; but only to have a more perfect idea, by adding another 
simple idea, which is always in fact joined with those other, of which his 
former complex idea consisted. But this reference of the name to a thing, 
whereof we had not the idea, is so far from helping at all, that it only serves 
the more to involve us in difficulties. For by this tacit reference to the real 
essence of that species of bodies, the word gold (which, by standing for a 
more or less perfect collection of simple ideas, serves to design that sort of 
body well enough in civil discourse) comes to have no signification at all, 
being put for somewhat, whereof we have no idea at all, and so can signify 
nothing at all, when the body itself is away. For however it may be thought 
all one, yet, if well considered, it will be found quite a different thing to ar- 
gue about gold in name, and about a parcel in the body itself, v. g. a piece 
of leaf-gold laid before us ; though in discourse we are fain to substitute 
the name for the thing. 

Sect. 20. The cause of the abuse, a supposition of nature's working 
always regularly. — That which I think very much disposes men to substitute 
their names for the real essences of species, is the supposition before men- 
tioned, that nature works regularly in the production of things, and sets the 
boundaries to each of those species, by giving exactly the same real internal 
constitution to each individual, which we rank under one general name. 
Whereas any one who observes their different qualities can hardly doubt, that 



324 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3, 

many of the \idividuals called by the same name, are, in their internal consti- 
tution, as different one from another as several of those which are ranked 
under different specific names. This supposition, however, that the same 
precise and internal constitution goes always with the same specific name, 
makes men forward to take those names for the representatives of those real 
essences, though indeed they signify nothing but the complex ideas they have 
in their minds when they use them. So that, if I may so say, signifying one 
tiring, and being supposed for, or put in the place of another, they cannot but, 
kj such a kind of use, cause a great deal of uncertainty in men's discourses ; 
especially in those who have thoroughly imbibed the doctrine of substantial 
forms, whereby they firmly imagine the several species of things to be deter- 
mined and distinguished. 

Sect. 21. This abuse contains two false suppositions. — But however pre- 
posterous and absurd it be to make our names stand for ideas we have not, 
or (which is all one) essences that we know not, it being in effect to make 
our words the signs of nothing ; yet it is evident to any one, who ever so lit- 
tle reflects on the use men make of their words, that there is nothing more 
familiar. When a man asks whether this or that thing he sees, let it be a 
drill, or a monstrous foetus, be a man or no ; it is evident, the question is not, 
whether that particular thing agree to his complex idea, expressed by the 
name man ; but whether it has in it the real essence of a species of things-, 
which he supposes his name man to stand for. In which way of using the 
names of substances there are these false suppositions contained. 

First, there are certain precise essences, according to which nature makes 
all particular things, and by which they are distinguished into species. That 
every thing has a real constitution, whereby it is what it is, and on which its 
sensible qualities depend, is past doubt ; but I think it has been proved, that 
this makes not the distinction of species, as we rank them, nor the bounda- 
ries of their names. 

Secondly, this tacitly also insinuates, as if we had ideas of these proposed 
essences. For to what purpose else is it to inquire whether this or that thing 
have the real essence of the species man, if we did not suppose that there were 
feiich a specific essence known 1 which yet is utterly false : and therefore such 
application of names, as would make them stand for ideas which we havenot r 
must needs cause great disorder in discourses and reasonings about them, and 
be a great inconvenience in our communication by words. 

Sect. 22. A supposition that words have a certain and evident significa- 
tion. — Sixthly, there remains yet another more general, though perhaps less 
observed, abuse of words ; and that is, that men having by a long and familiar 
use annexed to them certain ideas, they are apt to imagine so near and neces- 
sary a connexion between the names and the signification they use them in, 
that they forwardly suppose one cannot but understand what their meaning 
is ; and therefore one ought to acquiesce in the words delivered, as if it were 
past doubt, that, in the use of those common received sounds, the speaker and 
hearer had necessarily the same precise ideas. Whence presuming, that when 
they have in discourse used any term, they have thereby, as it were, set be- 
fore others the very thing they talk of ; and so likewise taking the words of 
others as naturally standing for just what they themselves have been accus- 
tomed to apply them to, they never trouble themselves to explain their own, 
or understand clearly others' meaning. From whence commonly proceed 
noise and wrangling, without improvement or information ; whilst men take 
words to be the constant regular marks of agreed notions, which in truth are 
no more but the voluntary and unsteady signs of their own ideas. And yet men 
think it strange, if, in discourse, or (where it is often absolutely necessary) in 
dispute, one sometimes asks the meaning of their terms : though the arguinga 
one may every dav observe in conversation make it evident, that there are few 
names of complex ideas which any two men use for the same just precise col- 
lection. It is hard to name a word which will not be a clear instance of this. 
Life is a term, none more familiar. Any one almost would take it for an af- 



Ch. 10. ABUSE OF WORDS. 325 

front to be asked what he meant by it. And yet if it comes in question, 
whether a plant, that lies ready formed in the seed, have life ; whether the 
embryo in an egg before incubation, or a man in a swoon without sense or 
motion, be alive or no ; it is easy to perceive that a clear, distinct, settled 
idea does not always accompany the use of so known a word as that of life is. 
Some gross and confused conceptions men indeed ordinarily have, to which 
they apply the common words of their language ; and such a loose use of their 
words serves them well enough in their ordinary discourses or affairs. ! But 
this is not sufficient for philosophical inquiries. Knowledge and reasoning- 
require precise determinate ideas. And though men will not be so impor- 
tunately dull, as not to understand what others say without demanding an ex- 
plication of their terms ; nor so troublesomely critical, as to correct others in the 
use of the words they receive from them : yet where truth and knowledge are 
concerned in the case, I know not what fault it can be to desire the explica- 
tion of words whose sense seems dubious ; or why a man should be ashamed 
to own his ignorance in what sense another man uses his words, since he has 
no other way of certainly knowing it but by being informed. This abuse of 
taking words upon trust has nowhere spread so far, nor with so ill effects, as 
among men of letters. The multiplication and obstinacy of disputes, which 
have so laid waste the intellectual world, is owing to nothing more than to 
this ill use of words. For though it be generally believed that there is great 
diversity of opinions in the volumes and variety of controversies the world is 
distracted with, yet the most I can find that the contending learned men of 
different parties do, in their arguings one with another, is, that they speak 
different languages. For I am apt to imagine, that when any of them, quit- 
ting terms, think upon things, and know what they think, they think all the 
same ; though perhaps what they would have, be different. 

Sect. 23. The ends of language : 1. to convey our ideas. — To conclude 
this consideration of the imperfection and abuse of language ; the ends of 
language in our discourse with others being chiefly these three : first, to make 
known one man's thoughts or ideas to another ; secondly, to do it with as 
much ease and quickness as possible ; and, thirdly, thereby to convey the 
knowledge of things : language is either abused or deficient when it fails of 
any of these three. 

First, words fail in the first of these ends, and lay not open one man's ideas 
to another's view : 1. When men have names in their mouths, without any 
determinate ideas in their minds, whereof they are the signs ; or, 2. When 
they apply the common received names of any language to ideas, to which 
the common use of that language does not apply them : or, 3. When they 
apply them very unsteadily, making them stand now for one, and by and by 
for another idea. 

Sect. 24. To do it with quickness. — Secondly, men fail of conveying 
their thoughts with all the quickness and ease that may be, when they have 
complex ideas, without having any distinct names for them. This is some- 
times the fault of the language itself, which has not in it a sound yet applied 
to such a signification ; and sometimes the fault of the man who has not yet 
learned the name for that idea he would show another. 

Sect. 25. Therewith to convey the knowledge of things. — Thirdly, 
there is no knowledge of things conveyed by men's words, when their ideas 
agree not to the reality of things. Though it be a defect, that has its original 
in our ideas, which are not so conformable to the nature of things, as atten- 
tion, study, and application might make them ; yet it fails not to extend it- 
self to our words too, when we use them as signs of real beings, which yet 
never had any reality or existence. 

Sect. 28. How men's words fail in all these. — First, he that hath words 
of any language, without distinct ideas in his mind to which he applies them, 
does, so far as he uses them in discourse, only make a noise without any sense 
or signification ; and how learned soever he may seem by the use of hard 
v/ords, or learned terms, is not much more advanced thereby in knowledge 



326 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3 

than he would he in learning, who had nothing- in his study but the bare ti- 
tles of books, without possessing- the contents of them. For all such wordsj ' 
however put into discourse, according to the right construction of grammati- 
cal rules, or the harmony of well turned periods, do yet amount to nothing 
but bare sounds, and nothing else. 

Sect. 27. Secondly, he that has complex ideas, without particular names 
for them, would be in no better case than a bookseller, who had in his ware- 
house volumes that lay there unbound, and without titles ; which he could 
therefore make known to others only by showing the loose sheets, and commu- 
nicating them only by tale. This man is hindered in his discourse for want of 
words to communicate his complex ideas, which he is therefore forced to make 
known by an enumeration of the simple ones that compose them; and so is fain 
often to use twenty words to express what another man signifies in one. 

Sect. 28. Thirdly, he that puts not constantly the same sign for the same 
idea, but uses the same words sometimes in one, and sometimes in another 
signification, ought to pass in the schools and conversation for as fair a man 
as he does in the market and exchange, who sells several things under the 
same name. 

Sect. 29. Fourthly, he that applies the words of any language to ideas 
different from those to which the common use of that country applies them, 
however his own understanding may be filled with truth and light, will not by 
such words be able to convey much of it to others, without defining his terms. I 
For however the sounds are such as are familiarly known, and easily enter 
the ears of those who are accustomed to them ; yet standing for other ideas 
than those they usually are annexed to, and are wont to excite in the mind or 
the hearers, they cannot make known the thoughts of him who thus uses them. 

Sect. 30. Fifthly, he that imagined to himself substances such as never 
have been, and filled his head with ideas which have not any correspondence 
with the real nature of things, to which yet he gives settled and defined names, 
may fill his discourse, and perhaps another man's head, with the fantastical 
imaginations of his own brain, but will be very far from advancing thereby 
one jot in real and true knowledge. 

Sect. 31. He that hath names without ideas, wants meaning in his words, 
and speaks only empty sounds. He that hath complex ideas without names I 
for them, wants liberty and despatch in his expressions, and is necessitated 
to use periphrases. He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily, will either ! 
be not minded, or not understood. He that applies his names to ideas differ- \ 
ent from their common use, wants propriety in his language, and speaks gib- 
berish. And he that hath the ideas of substances disagreeing with the real 
existence of things, so far wants the materials of true knowledge in his under- 
standing, and hath instead thereof chimeras. 

Sect. 32. How in substances. — In our notions concerning substances, we 
are liable to all the former inconveniences : v. g. 1. He that uses the word taran- 
tula, without having any imagination or idea what it stands for, pronounces a i 
good word ; but so long means nothing at all by it. 2. He that in anew dis- 
covered country shall see several sorts of animals and vegetables, unknown to 
him before, may have as true ideas of them as of a horse or a stag ; but can 
speak of them only by a description, till he shall either take the names the 
natives call them by, or give them names himself. 3. He that uses the word I 
body sometimes for pure extension, and sometimes for extension and solidity 
together, will talk very fallaciously. 4. He that gives the name horse to that \ 
idea which common usage calls mule, talks improperly, and will not be un- 
derstood. 5. He that thinks the name centaur stands for some real being, 
imposes on himself, and mistakes words for things. 

Sect. 33. How in modes and relations. — In modes and relations generally 
we are liable only to the four first of these inconveniences ; viz. 1. 1 may have 
in my memory the names of modes, as gratitude or charity, and yet not have s 
any precise ideas annexed in my thoughts to those names. 2. I may have 
ideas, and not know the names that belong to them ; v. g. I may have the 



Ch. 10. ABUSE OF WORDS. 327 

idea of a man's drinking- till his colour and humour be altered, till his tongue 
trips, and his eyes look red, and his feet fail him ; and yet not know that it 
is to be called drunkenness. 3. I may have the ideas of virtues or vices, and 
names also, but apply them amiss : v. g. when I apply the name frugality to 
that idea which others call and signify by this sound, covetousness. 4. I may 
use any of those names with inconstancy. 5. But, in modes and relations, 
I cannot have ideas disagreeing to the existence of things : for modes being 
complex ideas made by the mind at pleasure ; and relation being but by way 
of considering or comparing two things together, and so also an idea of my 
own making ; these ideas can scarce be found to disagree with any thing ex- 
isting, since they are not in the mind as the copies of tlungs regularly made by 
nature, nor as properties inseparably flowing from the internal constitution or 
essence of any substance ; but as it were patterns lodged in my memory, with 
names annexed to them, to denominate actions and relations by, as they come 
to exist. But the mistake is commonly in my giving a wrong name to my 
conceptions ; and so using words in a different sense from other people, I am 
not understood, but am thought to have wrong ideas of them, when I give 
wrong names to them. Only if I put in my ideas of mixed modes or relations 
any inconsistent ideas together, I fill my head also with chimeras ; since 
such ideas, if well examined, cannot so much exist in the mind, much less 
any real being ever be denominated from them. 

Sect. 34. Figurative speech also an abuse of language. — Sixthly, since wit 
and fancy find easier entertainment in the world than dry truth and real know- 
ledge, figurative speeches. and allusion in language will hardly be admitted as 
an imperfection or abuse of it. Fconfess, in discourses where we seek rather 
pleasure and delight than information and improvement, such ornaments as 
are borrowed from them can scarce pass for faults. But yet if we woukH 
speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides 
order and clearness, all the artificial and figurative application of words elo- 
quence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move 
the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment, and so indeed are perfect 
icheats ; and, therefore, however laudable or allowable oratory may render them 
"m harangues and popular addresses, they are certainly, in all discourses that 
pretend to inform or instruct, wholly to be avoided ; and where truth and 
knowledge are concerned, cannot but be thought a great fault, either of the 
language or person that makes use of them. What, and how various they 
are, will be superfluous here to take notice ; the books of rhetoric which 
abound in the world will instruct those who want to be informed : only I can 
not but observe how little the preservation and improvement of truth and 
knowledge is the care and concern of mankind ; since the arts of fallacy are 
endowed and preferred. It is evident how much men love to deceive and be" 1 
deceived, since rhetoric, that powerful instrument of error and deceit, has its 
established professors, is publicly taught, and has always been had in great re- | 
putation : and, I doubt not, but it will be thought great boldness, if not brutality 
in me, to have said thus much against it. Eloquence, like the fair sex, has \ 
too prevailing beauties in it to suffer itself ever to be spoken against. And I 
it is in vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving wherein men find pleasure 
to be deceived. \ 



CHAPTER XI. 

OF THE REMEDIES OF THE FOREGOING IMPERFECTIONS AND 

ABUSES. 

Sect. 1. They are worth seeking. — The natural and improved imperfec- 
tions of languages we have seen above at large; and speech being the great 
oond that holds society together, and the common conduit whereby the i.m 



32S OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

provements of knowledge are conveyed from one man, and one generation 
to another ; it would well deserve our most serious thoughts to consider what 
remedies are to be found for the inconveniences above mentioned. 

Sect. 2. Are not easy. — I am not so vain to think, that any one can pre- 
tend to attempt the perfect reforming the languages of the world, no, not so 
much as of his own country, without rendering himself ridiculous. To re- 
quire that men should use their words constantly in the same sense, and for 
none but determined and uniform ideas, would be to think that all men should 
have the same notions, and should talk of nothing but what they have clear 
and distinct ideas of; which is not to be expected by any one who hath not 
vanity enough to imagine he can prevail with men to be very knowing or 
very silent. And he must be very little skilled in the world, who thinks that 
a voluble tongue shall accompany only a good understanding ; or that men's 
talking much or little should hold proportion only to their knowledge. 

Sect. 3. But yet necessary to 'philosophy. — But though the market and 
exchange must be left to their own ways of talking, and gossipings not be 
robbed of their ancient privilege ; though the schools and men of argument 
would perhaps take it amiss to have any thing offered to abate the length, or 
lessen the number, of their disputes ; yet methinks those who pretend seriously 
to search after or maintain truth, should think themselves obliged to study how 
they might deliver themselves without obscurity, doubtfulness, or equivocation, 
to which men's words are naturally liable, if care be not taken. 

Sect. 4. Misuse of words the great cause of errors. — For he that shall 
well consider the errors and obscurity, the mistakes and confusion, that are 
spread in the world by an ill use of words, will find some reason to doubt 
whether language, as it has been employed, has contributed more to the im- 
provement or hinderance of knowledge among mankind. How many are 
there that, when they would think on things, fix their thoughts only on words, 
especially when they would apply their minds to moral matters 1 And who 
then can wonder, if the result of such contemplations and reasonings, about 
little more than sounds, whilst the ideas they annexed to them are very con- 
fused and very unsteady, or perhaps none at all ; who can wonder, I say, 
that such thoughts and reasonings end in nothing but obscurity and mistake, 
without any clear judgment or knowledge ] 

Sect. 5. Obstinacy. — This inconvenience, in an ill use of words, men suf- 
fer in their own private meditations : but much more manifest are the disor- 
ders which follow from it, in conversation, discourse, and arguings with oth- 
ers. For language being the great conduit whereby men convey their dis- 
coveries, reasonings, and knowledge, from one to another ; he that makes an 
ill use of it, though he does not corrupt the fountains of knowledge, which are 
in things themselves ; yet he does, as much as in him lies, break or stop the 
pipes whereby it is distributed to the public use and advantage of mankind. 
He that uses words without any clear and steady meaning, what does he but 
lead himself and others into errors % And he that designedly does it, ought 
to be looked on as an enemy to truth and knowledge. And yet who can 
wonder that all the sciences and parts of knowledge have been so overcharged 
with obscure and equivocal terms, and insignificant and doubtful expressions, 
capable to make the most attentive or quick-sighted very little or not at all the 
more knowing or orthodox ; since subtilty, in those who make profession to 
teach or defend truth, hath passed so much for a virtue : a virtue, indeed, 
which, consisting for the most part in nothing but the fallacious and illusory 
use of obscure or deceitful terms, is only fit to make men more conceited ir. 
their ignorance, and more obstinate in their errors. 

Sect. 6. And wrangling. — Let us look into the books of controversy of 
any kind ; there we shall see, that the effect of obscure, unsteady, or equivo- 
cal terms, is nothing hut noise and wrangling about sounds, without convincing 
ur bettering a man's understanding. For if the idea be not agreed on betwixt 
the speaker and hearer, for which the words stand, the argument is not about 
things, but names. As often as such a word, whose signification is not as- 



J0' 



Ch. 11. REMEDIES OF THE ABUSE OF WORDS. 829 

certained betwixt them, comes in use, their understandings have no other ob- 
ject wherein they agree, but barely the sound ; the things that they think on 
at that time, as expressed by that word, being quite different. 

Sect. 7. Instance, bat and bird. — Whether a bat be a bird or no, is not a 
question ; whether a bat be another thing than indeed it is, or have other 
qualities than indeed it has, for that would be extremely absurd to doubt of: 
but the question is, 1. Either between those that acknowledge themselves to 
have but imperfect ideas of one or both of this sort of things, for which these 
names are supposed to stand ; and then it is a real inquiry concerning the 
name of a bird or a bat, to make their yet imperfect ideas of it more complete, 
by examining whether all the simple ideas, to which, combined together, they 
both give the name bird, be all to be found in a bat : but this is a question only 
of inquirers (not disputers,) who neither affirm nor deny, but examine. Or, 
2. It is a question between disputants, whereof the one affirms, and the other 
denies, that a bat is a bird. And then the question is barely about the signi- 
fication of one or both these words ; in that they not having both the same 
complex ideas, to which they give these two names, one holds, and the other 
denies, that these two names may be affirmed one of another. Were they 
agreed in the signification of these two names, it were impossible they should 
dispute about them : for they would presently and clearly see (were that ad- 
justed between them) whether all the simple ideas, of the more general name 
bird, were found in the complex idea of a bat, or no ; and so there could be no 
doubt whether a bat were a bird or no. And here I desire it may be consid- 
ered, and carefully examined, whether the greatest part of the disputes in the 
world are not merely verbal, and about the signification of words ; and whether, 
if the terms they are made in were defined, and reduced in their signification 
(as they must be where they signify any thing) to determined collections of the 
simple ideas they do or should stand for, those disputes would not end of them- 
selves and immediately vanish. I leave it then to be considered, what the 
learning of disputation is, and how well they are employed for the advantage 
of themselves or others, whose business is only the vain ostentation of sounds ; 
i. e. those who spend their lives in disputes and controversies. When I shall 
see any of those combatants strip all his terms of ambiguity and obscurity 
(which every one may do in the words he uses himself) I shall think him a 
champion for knowledge, truth, and peace, and not the slave of vainglory, 
ambition, or a party. 

Sect. 8. To remedy the defects of speech before mentioned to some de- 
gree, and to prevent the inconveniences that follow from them, I imagine the 
observation of these following rules may be of use, till somebody better able 
shall judge it worth his while to think more maturely on this matter, and 
oblige the world with his thoughts on it. 

1. Remedy, to use no word without an idea. — First, a man should take care 
to use no word without a signification, no name without an idea for which he 
makes it stand. This rule will not seem altogether needless to any one who 
shall take the pains to recollect how often he has met with such words, as in- 
stinct, sympathy, and antipathy, &c. in the discourse of others, so made use 
of, as he might easily conclude, that those that used them had no ideas in their 
minds to which they applied them ; but spoke them only as sounds, which 
usually served instead of reasons on the like occasions. Not but that these 
words, and the like, have very proper significations in which they may be 
used ; but there being no natural connexion between any words and any ideas, 
these, and any other, may be learned by rote, and pronounced or writ by men, 
who have no ideas in their minds to which they have annexed them, and for 
which they make them stand ; which is necessary they should, if men would 
speak intelligibly even to themselves alone. 

Sect. 9. 2. To have distinct ideas annexed to them in modes. — Secondly, 
it is not enough a man uses his words as signs of some ideas : those he an- 
nexes them to, if they be simple, must be clear and distinct; if complex, must 
be determinate, i. e. the precise collection of simple ideas settled in the mind 
2R 



330 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

with that sound annexed to it, as the sign of that precise determined collection, 
and no other. This is very necessary in names of modes, and especially moral 
words ; which having no settled objects in nature, from whence their ideas are 
taken, as from their original, are apt to be very confused. Justice is a word 
in every man's mouth, but most commonly with a very undetermined loose sig- 
nification : which will always be so, unless a man has in his mind a distinct 
comprehension of the component parts that complex idea consists of: and if 
it be decompounded, must be able to resolve it still on, till he at last comes to 
the simple ideas that make it up : and unless this be done, a man makes an ill 
use of the word, let it be justice, for example, or any other. I do not say, a 
man need stand to recollect, and make this analysis at large, every time the 
word justice comes in his way : but this at least is necessary, that he have 
so examined the signification of that name, and settled the idea of all its 
parts in his mind, that he can do it when he pleases. If one, who makes his 
complex idea of justice to be such a treatment of the person or goods of another 
as is according to law, hath not a clear and distinct idea what law is, which 
makes a part of his complex idea of justice, it is plain his idea of justice it- 
self will be confused and imperfect. This exactness will, perhaps, be judged 
very troublesome ; and therefore most men will think they may be excused 
from settling the complex ideas of mixed modes so precisely in their minds. 
But yet I must say, till this be done, it must not be wondered that they have a 
great deal of obscurity and contusion in their own minds, and a great deal of 
wrangling in their discourse with others. 

Sect. 10. Distinct and conformable in substances. — In the names of 
substances, for a right use of them, something more is required than barely 
determined ideas. In these the names must also be conformable to things as 
they exist : but of this I shall have occasion to speak more largely by and by. 
This exactness is absolutely necessary in inquiries after philosophical know- 
ledge, and in controversies about truth. And though it would be well, too, if 
it extended itself to common conversation, and the ordinary affairs of life , 
yet I think that is scarce to be expected. Vulgar notions suit vulgar dis- 
courses ; and both, though confused enough, yet. serve pretty well the market 
and the wake. Merchants and lovers, cooks and tailors, have words where- 
withal to despatch their ordinary affairs ; and so, I think, might philosophers and 
disputants too, if they had a mind to understand, and to be clearly understood. 

Sect. 11. 3. Propriety. — Thirdly, it is not enough that men have ideas, de- 
termined ideas, for which they make these signs stand : but they must also take 
care to apply their words, as near as may be, to such ideas as common use 
has annexed them to. For words, especially of languages already framed, 
being no man's private possession, but the common measure of commerce and 
communication, it is not for any one, at pleasure, to change the stamp they 
are current in, nor alter the ideas they are affixed to ; or, at least, when there 
is a necessity to do so, he is bound to give notice of it. Men's intentions in 
speaking are, or at least should be, to be understood ; which cannot be with- 
out frequent explanations, demands, and other the like incommodious inter- 
ruptions, where men do not follow common use. Propriety of speech is that 
which gives our thoughts entrance into other men's minds with the greatest 
ease and advantage ; and therefore deserves some part of our care and study, 
especially in the names of moral words. The proper signification and use of 
terms is best to be learned from those who in their writings and discourses 
appear to have had the clearest notions, and applied to them their terms with 
the exactest choice and fitness. This way of using a man's words, accord- 
ing to the propriety of the language, though it have not always the good for- 
tune to be understood, yet most commonly leaves the blame of it on him 
who is so unskilful in the language he speaks, as not to understand it, when 
made use of as it ought to be. 

Sect. 12. 4. To make known their meaning. — Fourthly, but because com- 
mon use has not so visibly annexed any signification to words, as to mako 
men know always certainly what they precisely stand for ; and because men, 



Ch. 11. REMEDIES OF THE ABUSE OF WORDS. 331 

in the improvement of their knowledge, come to have ideas different from the 
vulgar and ordinary received ones, for which they must either make new- 
words (which men seldom venture to do, for fear of being thought guilty of 
affectation or novelty) or else must use old ones in a new signification : 
therefore, after the observation of the foregoing rules, it is sometimes neces- 
sary, for the ascertaining the signification of words, to declare their meaning ; 
where either common use has left it uncertain and loose (as it has in most 
names of very complex ideas) or where the term, being very material in the 
discourse, and that upon which it chiefly turns, is liable to any doubtfulness 
or mistake. 

Sect. 13. And that three ways. — As the ideas men's words stand for are 
of different sorts ; so the way of making known the ideas they stand for, 
when there is occasion, is also different. For though defining be thought the 
proper way to make known the proper signification of words, yet there are 
some words that will not be defined, as there are others, whose precise mean- 
ing cannot be made known but by definition ; and perhaps a third, which par- 
take somewhat of both the other, as we shall see in the names of simple ideas, 
modes, and substances. 

Sect. 14. 1„ In simple ideas, by synonymous terms, or showing. — First, 
when a man makes use of the name of any simple idea, which he perceives is 
not understood, or is in danger to be mistaken, he is obliged by the laws of 
ingenuity, and the end of speech, to declare his meaning, and make known 
what idea he makes it stand for. This, as has been shown, cannot be done 
by definition ; and therefore, when a synonymous word fails to do it, there is 
but one of these ways left. First, sometimes the naming the subject, where- 
in that simple idea is to be found, will make its name to be understood by 
those who are acquainted with that subject, and know it by that name. So 
to make a countryman understand what " feuille-morte" colour signifies, it 
may suffice to tell him, it is the colour of withered leaves falling in autumn. 
Secondly, but the only sure way of making known the signification of the name 
of any simple idea, is by presenting to his senses that subject which may pro- 
duce it in his mind, and make him actually have the idea that word stands for. 

Sect. 15. 2. In mixed modes, by definition. — Secondly, mixed modes, es- 
pecially those belonging to morality, being most of them such combinations 
of ideas as the mind puts together of its own choice, and whereof there are 
not always standing patterns to be found existing ; the signification of their 
names cannot be made known, as those of simple ideas, by any showing ; 
but, in recompense thereof, may be perfectly and exactly defined. For they 
being combinations of several ideas, that the mind of man has arbitrarily put 
together, without reference to any archetypes, men may, if they please, ex- 
actly know the ideas that go to each composition, and so both use these words 
in a certain and undoubted signification, and perfectly declare, when there is 
occasion, what they stand for. This, if well considered, would lay great 
blame on those who make not their discourses, about moral things very clear 
and distinct. For since the precise signification of the names of mixed 
modes, or, which is all one, the real essence of each species is to be known, 
they being not of nature's, but man's making, it is a great negligence and per- 
verseness to discourse of moral things with uncertainty and obscurity ; which 
is more pardonable in treating of natural substances, where doubtful terms are 
hardly to be avoided, for a quite contrary reason, as we shall see by and by. 

Sect. 16. Morality capable of demonstration. — Upon this ground it is, 
that I am bold to think that morality is capable of demonstration, as well as 
mathematics ; since the precise real essence of the things moral words stand 
for may be perfectly known ; and so the congruity or incongruity of the 
things themselves be certainly discovered ; in which consists perfect know- 
ledge. Nor let any one object, that the names of substances are often to be 
made use of in morality, as well as those of modes, from which will arise 
obscurity. For as to substances, when concerned in moral discourses, their 
divers natures are not so much inquired into as supposed ; v. g. when we say 



332 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

that man is subject to law, we msan nothing by man but a corporeal rational 
creature : what the real essence or other qualities of that creature are, in this 
case, is noway considered. And therefore, whether a child or changeling be a 
man in a physical sense, may among the naturalists be as disputable as it will, 
it concerns not at all the moral man, as I may call him, which is this immova- 
ble, unchangeable idea, a corporeal rational being. For where there a mon- 
key, or any other creature, to be found, that has the use of reason to such a 
degree as to be able to understand general signs, and to deduce consequences 
about general ideas, he would no doubt be subject to law, and in that sense 
be a man, how much soever he differed in shape from others of that name. 
The names of substances, if they be used in them as they should, can no 
more disturb moral than they do mathematical discourses : where, if the 
mathematician speaks of a cube or globe of gold, or any other body, he has 
his clear settled idea, which varies not, though it may by mistake be ap 
plied to a particular body to which it belongs not. 

Sect. 17. Definitions can make moral discourses clear. — This I have here 
mentioned by the by, to show of what consequence it is for men, in their 
names of mixed modes, and consequently in all their moral discourses, to de- 
fine their words when there is occasion : since thereby moral knowledge may 
be brought to so great clearness and certainty. And it must be great want 
of ingenuity (to say no worse of it) to refuse to do it : since a definition is 
the only way whereby the precise meaning of moral words can be known ; 
and yet a way whereby their meaning may be known certainly, and without 
leaving any room for any contest about it. And therefore the negligence or 
perverseness of mankind cannot be excused, if their discourses in morality be 
not much more clear than those in natural philosophy ; since they are about 
ideas in the mind, which are none of them false or disproportionate : they 
having no external beings for the archetypes which they are referred to, and 
must correspond with. It is far easier for men to frame in their minds an 
idea which shall be the standard to which they will give the name justice, 
with which pattern, so made, all actions that agree shall pass under that de- 
nomination ; than, having seen Aristides, to frame an idea that shall in all 
things be exactly like him : who is as he is, let men make what idea they 
please of him. For the one, they need but know the combination of ideas 
that are put together in their own minds ; for the other, they must inquire 
into the whole nature, and abstruse hidden constitution, and various qualities 
of a thing existing without them. 

Sect. 18. And is the only way. — Another reason that makes the defining 
of mixed modes so necessary, especially of moral words, is what I mentioned 
a little before, viz. that it is the only way whereby the signification of the 
most of them can be known with certainty. For the ideas they stand for being 
for the most part such whose component parts nowhere exist together, but 
scattered and mingled with others, it is the mind alone that collects them, and 
gives them the union of one idea : and it is only by words, enumerating the 
several simple ideas which the mind has united, that we can make known to 
others what their names stand for ; the assistance of the senses in this case 
not helping us, by the proposal of sensible objects, to show the ideas which 
our names of this kind stand for, as it does often in the names of sensible 
simple ideas, and also to some degree in those of substances. 

Sect. 19. 3. In suhstances, by showing and defining. — Thirdly, for the 
explaining the signification of the names of substances, as they stand for the 
ideas we have of their distinct species, both the before-mentioned ways, viz. 
of showing and defining, are requisite in many cases to be made use of. For 
diere being ordinarily in each sort some leading qualities, to which we sup- 
pose the other ideas, which make up our complex idea of that species, an- 
nexed ; we forwardly give the specific name to that thing, wherein that cha 
racteristical mark is found, which we take to be the most distinguishing idea 
of that species. These leading or characteristical (as I may call them) ideas, 
in the sorts of animals and vegetables, are (as has been before remarked, ch 



Ch. 11. REMEDIES OF THE ABUSE OF WORDS. 333 

vi. sect. 29. and ch. ix. sect. 15.) mostly figure, and in inanimate bodies 
colour, and in some both together. Now, 

Sect. 20. Ideas of the leading qualities of substances are best got by 
showing. — These leading sensible qualities are those which make the chief 
ingredients of our specific ideas, and consequently the most observable and 
invariable part in the definitions of our specific names, as attributed to sorts 
of substances coming under our knowledge. For though the sound man, in 
its own nature, be as apt to signify a complex idea, made up of animality and 
rationality, united in the same subject, as to signify any other combination ; 
yet used as a mark to stand for a sort of creatures we count of our own kind, 
perhaps, the outward shape is as necessary to be taken into our complex idea, 
signified by the word man, as any other we find in it: and therefore why Pla- 
to's "animal implume bipes latis unguibus ,> should not be a good definition 
of the name man, standing for that sort of creatures, will not be easy to show : 
for it is the shape, as the leading quality, that seems more to determine that; 
species than a faculty of reasoning, which appears not at first, and in some 
never. And if this be not allowed to be so, I do not know how they can be 
excused from murder who kill monstrous births (as we call them), because of 
an unordinary shape, without knowing whether they have a rational soul or 
no ; which can be no more discerned in a well-formed than ill-shaped infant, 
as soon as born. And who is it has informed us, that a rational soul can inhabit 
no tenement, unless it has just such a sort of frontispiece ; or can join itself to, 
and inform no sort of body but one that is just of such an outward structure 1 

Sect. 21. Now these leading qualities are best made known by showing, 
and can hardly be made known otherwise. For the shape of a horse, or 
cassiowary, will be but rudely and imperfectly imprinted on the mind by 
words ; the sight of the animals doth it a thousand times better : and the idea 
of the particular colour of gold is not to be got by any description of it, but 
only by the frequent exercise of the eyes about it, as is evident in those who 
are used to this metal, who will frequently distinguish true from counterfeit, 
pure from adulterate, by the sight; where others (who have as good eyes, but 
yet by use have not got the precise nice idea of that peculiar yellow) shall 
not perceive any difference. The like may be said of those other simple 
ideas, peculiar in their kind to any substance, for which precise ideas there 
are no peculiar names. The particular ringing sound there is in gold, dis- 
tinct from the sound of other bodies, has no particular name annexed to it, 
no more than the particular yellow that belongs to that metal. 

Sect. 22. The ideas of their powers best by definition. — But because 
many of the simple ideas that make up our specific ideas of substances are 
powers which lie not obvious to our senses in the things as they ordinarily ap- 
pear; therefore in the signification of our names of substances, some part of 
the signification will be better made known by enumerating those simple ideas 
than by showing the substance itself. For he that to the yellow shining 
colour of gold got by sight, shall, from my enumerating them, have the idea^ 
of great ductility, fusibility, fixedness, and solubility in aq. regia, will have a 
perfecter idea of gold than he can have by seeing a piece of gold, and thereby 
imprinting in his mind only its obvious qualities. But if the formal constitu- 
tion of this shining, heavy, ductile thing (from whence all these its properties 
flow) lay open to our senses, as the formal constitution or essence of a tri- 
angle does, the signification of the word gold might as easily be ascertained 
as that of triangle. 

Sect. 23. A reflection on the knowledge of spirits. — Hence we may take 
notice how much the foundation of all our knowledge of corporeal things lies 
in our senses. For how spirits, separate from bodies (whose knowledge 
and ideas of these things are certainly much more perfect than ours) know 
them, we have no notion, no idea at all. The whole extent of our know- 
ledge or imagination reaches not beyond our own ideas, limited to our ways 
of perception. Though yet it be not to be doubted that spirits of a higher 
rank than those immersed in flesh may have as clear ideas of the radical 



334 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 3. 

constitution of substances, as we have of a triangle, and so perceive how all 
their properties and operations flow from thence : but the manner how they 
come by that knowledge exceeds our conceptions. 

Sect. 24. 4. Ideas also of substances must be conformable to tilings. — 
But though definitions will serve to explain the names of substances as 
they stand for our ideas ; yet they leave them not without great imperfection 
as they stand for things. For our names of substances being not put barely 
for our ideas, but being made use of ultimately to represent things, and so 
are put in their place ; their signification must agree with the truth of things 
as well as with men's ideas. And therefore in substances we are not always 
to rest in the ordinary complex idea, commonly received as the signification 
of that word, but must go a little farther, and inquire into the nature and 
properties of the things themselves, and thereby perfect, as much as we can, 
our ideas of their distinct species ; or else learn them from such as are used to 
that sort of things, and are experienced in them. For since it is intended their 
names should stand for such collections of simple ideas as do really exist in 
things themselves, as well as for the complex idea in other men's minds, 
which in their ordinary acceptation they stand for: therefore to define their 
names right, natural history is to be inquired into ; and their properties are, 
with care and examination, to be found out. For it is not enough, for the 
avoiding inconveniences in discourse and arguings about natural bodies and 
substantial things, to have learned, from the propriety of the language, the 
common, but confused, or veiy imperfect idea, to which each word is applied, 
and to keep them to that idea in our use of them ; but we must, by acquainting 
ourselves with the history of that sort of things, rectify and settle our com- 
plex idea belonging to each specific name ; and in discourse with others 
(if we find them mistake us) we ought to tell what the complex idea is, that 
we make such a name stand for. This is the more necessary to be done by 
all those who search after knowledge and philosophical verity, in that children, 
being taught words whilst they have but imperfect notions of things, apply 
them at random, and without much thinking, and seldom frame determined 
ideas to be signified by them. Which custom (it being easy, and serving 
well enough for the ordinary affairs of life and conversation) they are apt to 
continue when they are men : and so begin at the wrong end, learning words 
first and perfectly, but make the notions to which they apply those words after- 
ward very overtly. By this means it comes to pass, that men speaking the 
proper language of their country, i. e. according to grammar rules of that 
language, do yet speak very improperly of things themselves ; and by their 
arguing one with another, make but small progress in the discoveries of use- 
ful truths, and the knowledge of things as they are to be found in themselves, 
and not in our imaginations ; and it matters not much, for the improvement of 
our knowledge, how they are called. 

Sect. 25. Not easy to be made so. — It were therefore to be wished, that 
men, versed in physical inquiries, and acquainted with the several sorts of na- 
tural bodies, would set down those simple ideas, wherein they observe the indi- 
viduals of each sort constantly to agree. This would remedy a great deal of 
that confusion which comes from several persons applying the same name to 
a collection of a smaller or greater number of sensible qualities, proportionably 
as they have been more or less acquainted with, or accurate in examining the 
qualities of any sort of things which come under one demomination. But a 
dictionary of this sort, containing, as it were, a natural history, requires too 
many hands, as well as too much time, cost, pains, and sagacity, ever to be 
hoped for; and till that be done, we must content ourselves with such defini- 
tions of the names of substances as explain the sense men use them in. And 
it would be well, where there is occasion, if they would afford us so much. 
This yet is not usually done ; but men talk to one another, and dispute in 
words, whose meaning is not agreed between them, out of a mistake that the 
significations of common words are certainly established, and the precise ideas 
they stand for perfectly known ; and that it is a shame to be ignorant of them. 



Ch. 11. REMEDIES OF THE ABUSE OF WORDS. 335 

Both which suppositions are false : no names of common complex ideas hav- 
ing so settled determined significations, that they are constantly used for the 
same precise ideas. Nor is it a shame for a man not to have a certain know- 
ledge of any thing, but by the necessary ways of attaining it ; and so it is ne 
discredit not to know what precise idea any sound stands for in another man's 
mind, without he declare it to me by some other way than barely using tha^ 
sound ; there being no other way, without such a declaration, certainly tc 
know it. Indeed, the necessity of communication by language brings men to 
an agreement in the signification of common words, within some tolerable 
latitude, that may serve for ordinary conversation : and so a man cannot be 
supposed wholly ignorant of the ideas which are annexed to words by common 
use, in a language familiar to him. But common use, being but a very uncer- 
tain rule, which reduces itself at last to the ideas of particular men, proves 
often but a very variable standard. But though such a dictionary, as I have 
above mentioned, will require too much time, cost, and pains, to be hoped 
for in this age ; yet methinks it is not unreasonable to propose, that words 
standing for things, which are known and distinguished by their outward 
shapes, should be expressed by little draughts and prints made of them. A 
vocabulary made after this fashion would, perhaps, with more ease, and in less 
time, teach the true signification of many terms, especially in languages of 
remote countries or ages, and settle truer ideas in men's minds of several 
things, whereof we read the names in ancient authors, than all the large and 
laborious comments of learned critics. Naturalists, that treat of plants and 
animals, have found the benefit of this way : and he that has had occasion to 
consult them, will have reason to confess, that he has a clearer idea of apium 
or ibex, from a little print of that herb or beast, than he could have from a 
long definition of the names of either of them. And so no doubt he would 
have of strigil and sistrum, if instead of currycomb and cymbal, which are 
the English names dictionaries render them by, he could see stamped in the 
margin small pictures of these instruments, as they were in use among the 
ancients. "Toga, tunica, pallium," are words easily translated by gown, 
coat, and cloak ; but we have thereby no more true ideas of the fashion of 
those habits among the Romans that we have of the faces of the tailors who 
made them. Such things as these, which the eye distinguishes by their 
shapes, would be best let into the mind by draughts made of them, and more 
determine the signification of such words than any other words set for them, 
or made use of to define them. But this only by the by. 

Sect. 26. 5. By constancy in their signification. — Fifthly, if men will not 
be at the pains to declare the meaning of their words, and definitions of their 
terms are not to be had ; yet this is the least that can be expected, that in all 
discourses, wherein one man pretends to instruct or convince another, he 
should use the same word constantly in the same sense : if this were done 
(which nobody can refuse without great disingenuity,) many of the books ex- 
tant might be spared ; many of the controversies in dispute would be at an 
end ; several of those great volumes, swoln with ambiguous words, now used 
in one sense, and by and by in another, would shrink into a very narrow com- 
pass ; and many of the philosophers (to mention no other) as well as poet's 
works, might be contained in a nut-shell. 

Sect. 27. When the variation is to be explained. — But after all, the pro- 
vision of words is so scanty in respect of that infinite variety of thoughts, 
that men, wanting terms to suit their precise notions, will, notwithstanding 
their utmost caution, be forced often to use the same word in somewhat dif- 
ferent senses. And though in the continuation of a discourse, or the pur- 
suit of an argument, there can be hardly room to digress into a particular de- 
finition, as often as a man varies the signification of any term ; yet the import 
of the discourse will, for the most part, if there be no designed fallacy, suf- 
ficiently lead candid and intelligent readers into the true meaning of it : but 
where that is not sufficient to guide the reader, there it concerns the writer 
<.o explain his meaning, and show in what sense he there uses that term. 



336 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4 

BOOK IV. 

OF KNOWLEDGE AND OPINION. 
CHAPTER I. 

OF KNOWLEDGE IN GENERAL. 

Sect. 1. Our knowledge conversant about our ideas. — Since the mind, m 
all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate object but its own 
ideas, which it alone does, or can contemplate, it is evident, that our know- 
ledge is only conversant about them. 

Sect. 2. Knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement 
of two ideas. — Knowledge then seems to me to be nothing but the perception 
of the connexion or agreement, or disagreement and repugnany of any of our 
ideas. In this alone it consists. Where this perception is, there is know- 
ledge : and where it is not, there, though we may fancy, guess, or believe, yet 
we always come short of knowledge. For when we know that white is not 
black, what do we else but perceive that these two ideas do not agree'? when 
we possess ourselves of the utmost security of the demonstration, that the 
three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones, what do we more but 
perceive, that equality to two right ones, does necessarily agree to, and ' is 
inseparable from, the three angles of a triangle 1(1) 

(1) The placing of certainty, as Mr Locke does, in the perception of the agree- 
ment or disagreement of our ideas, the bishop of Worcester suspects may be of 
dangerous consequence to that article of faith which be has endeavoured to defend; 
to which Mr Locke answers*, since your lordship hath not, as I remember, shown, 
or gone about to show, how this proposition, viz. that certainty consists in the per~ 
ception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, is opposite or inconsistent 
with that article of faith which your lordship has endeavoured to defend; it is plain, 
it is but your lordship's fear, that it may be of dangerous consequence to it, which, 
as I humbly conceive, is no proof that it is any way inconsistent with that article. 

Nobody, I think, can blame your lordship, or any one else, for being concerned 
for any article of the Christian faith: but if that concern (as it may, and as we know 
it has done) makes any one apprehend danger, where no danger is, are we, there- 
fore, to give up and condemn any proposition, because any one, though of the first 
rank and magnitude, fears it may be of dangerous consequence to any truth of reli- 
gion, without showing that it is so? If such fears be the measures whereby to 
judge of truth and falsehood, the affirming that there are antipodes would be still a 
heresy; and the doctrine of the motion of the earth must be rejected, as overthrow- 
ing the truth of the Scripture; for of that dangerous consequence it has been appre- 
hended to be, by many learned and pious divines, out of their great concern for 
religion. And yet, notwithstanding those great apprehensions of what dangerous 
consequence it might be, it is now universally received by learned men, ac an 
imdoubted truth; and writ for by some, whose belief of the Scripture is not at all 
questioned; and particularly, very lately, by a divine of the church of England, 
with great strength of reason, in his Avonderfully ingenious New Theory of the 
Earth. 

The reason your lordship gives of your fears, that it may be of such dangerous 
consequence to that article of faith which your lordship endeavours to defend, 
though it occur in more places than one, is only this, viz. that it is made use of 

* In his second letter to the Bishop of Worcester. 



Ch 1. OF KNOWLEDGE. 337 

Sect. 3. This agreement fourfold. — But to understand a little more dis- 
tinctly, wherein this agreement or disagreement consists, 1 think we may re- 
duce it all to these four sorts : 

by ill men to do mischief, i. e. to oppose that article of faith which your lordship 
hath endeavoured to defend. But, my lord, if it be a reason to lay by any thing 
as bad, because it is, or may be, used to an ill purpose, I know not what will be 
innocent enough to be kept. Arms, which were made for our defence, are some- 
times made use of to do mischief; and yet they are not thought of dangerous con- 
sequence for all that. Nobody lays by his sword and pistols, or thinks them of 
s'.ich dangerous consequence as to be neglected, or thrown away, because robbers, 
and the worst of men, sometimes make use of them to take away honest men's 
lives or goods. And the reason is, because they were designed, and will serve to 
preserve them. And who knows but this may be the present case? If your lord- 
ship thinks, that placing of certainty in the perception of the agreement or dis- 
agreement of ideas be to be rejected as false, because you apprehend it may be of 
dangerous consequence to that article of faith: on the other side, perhaps others, 
with me, may think it a defence against error, and so (as being of good use) to be 
received and adhered to. 

I would not, my lord, be hereby thought to set up my own, or any one's judg- 
ment against your lordship's. But 1 have said this only to show, whilst the argu- 
ment lies for or against the truth of any proposition, barely in an imagination that 
it may be of consequence to the supporting or overthrowing of any remote truth; 
it will be impossible, that way, to determine of the truth or falsehood of that pro- 
position. For imagination will be set up against imagination, and the stronger 
probably will be against your lordship; the strongest imaginations being usually 
in the weakest heads. The only way, in this case, to put it past doubt, is to show 
the inconsistency of the two propositions; and then it will be seen, that one over- 
throws the other; the true, the false one. 

Your lordship says, indeed, this is a new method of certainty. I will not say 
so myself, for fear of deserving a second reproof from your lordship, for being too 
forward to assume to myself the honour of being an original. But this, I think, 
gives me occasion, and will excuse me from being thought impertinent, if I ask 
your lordship, whether there be any other, or older, method of certainty? and what 
it is? For, if there be no other, nor older than this, either this was always the 
method of certainty, and so mine is no new one; or else the world is obliged to 
me for this new one, after having been so long in the want of so necessary a thing 
as a method of certainty. If there be an older, I am sure your lordship cannot but 
know it; your condemning mine as new, as well as your thorough insight into an- 
tiquity, cannot but satisfy every body that you do. And therefore to set the world 
right in a thing of thai, great concernment, and to overthrow mine, and thereby 
prevent the dangerous consequence there is in my having unreasonably started it, 
will not, I humbly conceive, misbecome your lordship's care of that article you 
have endeavoured to defend, nor the good-will you bear to truth in general. For 
I will be answerable for myself, that I shall; and I think I may be for all others, 
that they all will give off the placing of certainty in the perception of the agree- 
ment or disagreement of ideas, if your lordship will be pleased to show that it lies 
in any thing else. 

But truly, not to ascribe to myself an invention of what has been as old as know- 
ledge is in the world, I must own, I am not guilty of what your lordship is pleased 
to call starting new methods of certainty. Knowledge, ever since there has been 
any in the world, has consisted in one particular action in the mind; and so, I con- 
ceive, will continue to do to the end of it. And to start new methods of know- 
ledge, or certainty (for they are to me the same thing), i. e. to find out and pro- 
pose new methods of attaining knowledge, either with more ease and quickness, or 
in things yet unknown, is what I think nobody could blame: but this is not that 
-which your lordship here means by new methods of certainty. Your lordship, I 
think, means by it, the placing of certainty in something, wherein either it does 
not consist, or else wherein it was not placed before now; if this be to be called a 
new method of certainty. As to the latter of these, I shall know whether 1 am 
guilty or no, when your lordship will do me the favour to tell me wherein it wa3 
2S 



338 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

1. Identity, or diversity. 

2. Relation. 

3. Coexistence, or necessary connexion. 

4. Real existence. 

placed before: which your lordship knows I professed myself ignorant Of, when I 
writ ray book, and so I am still. But if starting new methods of certainty be the 
placing of certainty in something wherein it does not consist; whether I have done 
that or no, I must appeal to the experience of mankind. 

There are several actions of men's minds, that they are conscious to themselves 
of performing, as willing, believing, knowing, &c. which they have so particular a 
sense of, that they can distinguish them one from another; or else they could not 
say, when they willed, when they believed, and when they knew any thing. But 
though these actions were different enough from one another, not to be confounded 
by those who spoke of them, yet nobody, that I had met with, had, in their writings, 
particularly set down wherein the act of knowing precisely consisted. 

To this reflection upon the actions of my own mind the subject of my Essay 
concerning Human Understanding naturally led me; wherein if I have done any 
thing new, it has been to describe to others, more particularly than had been done 
before, what it is their minds do when they perform that action which they call 
knowing; and if, upon examination, they observe I have given a true account of 
that action of their minds in all the parts of it, I suppose it will be in vain to dis- 
pute against what they find and feel in themselves. And if I have not told them 
right and exactly what they find and feel in themselves, when their minds perform 
the act of knowing, what 1 have said will be all in vain; men will not be persuaded 
against their senses. Knowledge is an internal perception of their minds; and if, 
when they reflect on it, they find it is not what I have said it is, my groundless con- 
ceit will not be hearkened to, but be exploded by every body, and die of itself: and 
nobody need to be at any pains to drive it out of the world. So impossible is it 
to find out, or start new methods of certainty, or to have them received, if any one 
places it in any thing but in that wherein it really consists: much less can any one 
be in danger to be misled into error, by any such new, and to every one visibly 
senseless project. Can it be supposed, that any one could start a new method of 
seeing, and persuade men thereby that they do not see what they do see? It is to 
be feared, that any one can cast such a mist over their eyes, that they should not 
know when they see, and so be led out of the way by it? 

Knowledge, I find in myself, and I conceive in others, consists in the perception 
of the agreement or disagreement of the immediate objects of the mind in think- 
ing, which I call ideas: but whether it does so in others or no, must be determined 
by their own experience, reflecting upon the action of their mind in knowing; for 
that I cannot alter, nor, I think, they themselves. But whether they will call 
those immediate objects of their minds in thinking ideas or no, is perfectly in their 
own choice. If they dislike that name, they may call them notions or conceptions, 
or how they please; it matters not, if they use them so as to avoid obscurity and 
confusion. If they are constantly used in the same and a known sense, every one 
has the liberty to please himself in his terms; there lies neither truth, nor error, 
nor science, in that; though those that take them for things, and not for what they 
are, bare arbitrary signs of our ideas, make a great deal ado often about them; as 
if some great matter lay in the use of this or that sound. All that I know or can 
imagine of difference about them is, that those words are always best, whose signi- 
fications are best known in the sense they are used; and so are least apt to breed 
confusion. 

My lord, your lordship hath been pleased to find fault with my use of the new 
term, ideas, without telling me a better name for the immediate objects of the mind 
in thinking. Your lordship also has been pleased to find fault with my definition 
of knowledge, without doing me the favour to give me a better. For it is onlv 
about my definition of knowledge that all this stir concerning certainty is made 
For, with me, to know and to be certain is the same thing; what I know, that I am 
certain of; and what I am certain of, that I know. What reaches to knowledge, 1 
think may be called certainty $ and what comes short of certainty, I think cannot be 



Ch. 1. OF KNOWLEDGE. 339 

Sect. 4. 1. Of identity or diversity. — First, as to the first sort of agreement 
or disagreement, viz. identity or diversity. It is the first act of the mind, 
when it has any sentiments or ideas at all, to perceive its ideas ; and so far 
as it perceives them, to know each what it is, and thereby also to perceive 
their difference, and that one is not another. This is so absolutely neces* 
sary, that without it there could be no knowledge, no reasoning, no imagina- 

called knowledge; as your lordship could not but observe in the 18th section of 
chap. iv. of my 4th book, which you have quoted. 

My definition of knowledge stands thus; "knowledge seems to me to be nothing 
but the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repug- 
nancy of any of our ideas." This definition your lordship dislikes, and appre- 
hends it may be of dangerous consequence to that article of Christian faith which 
your lordship hath endeavoured to defend. For this there is a very easy remedy: 
it is but for your lordship to set aside this definition of knowledge by giving us a 
better, and this danger is over. But your lordship chooses rather to have a con- 
troversy with my book for having it in it, and to put me upon the defence of it: for 
which I must acknowledge myself obliged to your lordship for affording me so 
much of your time, and for allowing me the honour of conversing so much with 
one so far above me in all respects. 

Your lordship says, it may be of dangerous consequence to that article of Chris- 
tian faith which you have endeavoured to defend. Though the laws of disputing 
allow bare denial as a sufficient answer to sayings, without any offer of a proof: yet, 
my lord, to show how willing I am to give your lordship all satisfaction, in what 
you apprehend may be of dangerous consequence in my book, as to that article, 1 
shall not stand still sullenly, and put your lordship upon the difficulty of showing 
wherein that danger lies; but shall, on the other side, endeavour to show your lord- 
ship that that definition of mine, whether true or false, right or wrong, can be of 
no dangerous consequence to that article of faith. The reason which I shall offer 
for it is this: because it can be of no consequence to it at all. 

That which your lordship is afraid it may be dangerous to, is an article of faith- 
that which your lordship labours and is concerned for, is the certainty of faith. 
Now, my lord, I humbly conceive the certainty of faith, if your lordship thinks fit 
to call it so, has nothing to do with the certainty of knowledge. As to talk of the 
certainty of faith, seems all one to me as to talk of the knowledge of believing, a 
way of speaking not easy to me to understand. 

Place knowledge in what you will; start what new methods of certaintv you 
please, that are apt to leave men's minds more doubtful than before; place cer- 
tainty on such ground as will leave little or no knowledge in the world (for these . 
are the arguments your lordship uses against my definition of knowledge): this 
shakes not at all, nor in the least concerns the assurance of faith; that is quite dis- 
tinct from it, neither stands nor falls with knowledge. 

Faith stands by itself, and upon grounds of its own; nor can be removed from 
them, and placed on those of knowledge. Their grounds are so far from being 
the same, or having any thing common, that when it is brought to certainty, faith 
is destroyed; it is knowledge then, and faith no longer. 

With what assurance soever of believing I assent to any article of faith, so that 
I steadfastly venture my all upon it, it is still but believing. Bring it to certainty, 
and it ceases to be faith. I believe that Jesus Christ was crucified, dead, and buried, 
rose again the third day from the dead, and ascended into heaven: let now sue!. 
methods of knowledge or certainty be started, as leave men's minds more doubtful 
than before; let the grounds of knowledge be resolved into what any one pleases, 
it touches not my faith; the foundation of that stands as sure as before, and cannot 
be at all shaken by it; and one may as well say, that any thing that weakens the 
sight, or casts a mist before the eyes, endangers the hearing, as that any thing 
which alters the nature of knowledge (if that could be done) should be of dangerous 
consequence to an article of faith. 

Whether then I am or am not mistaken in the placing certainty in the percep- 
tion of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, — whether this account of know 
ledge be true or false, enlarges or straitens the bounds of it more than it should,-- 



340 Oi 1 HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

Lion, no distinct thoughts at all. By this the mind clearly and infallibly per- 
ceives each idea to agree with itself, and to be what it is : and all distinct 
ideas to disagree, i. e. the one not to be the other ; and this if does without 
pains, labour, or deduction ; but at first view, by its natural power of percep- 
tion and distinction. And though men of art have reduced this into those 
general rules, what is, is ; and, it is impossible for the same thing to be, and 
not to be ; for ready application in all cases, wherein there may be occasion 
to reflect on it ; yet it is certain, that the first exercise of this faculty is about 
particular ideas. A man infallibly knows, as soon as ever he has them in his 
mind, that the ideas he calls white and round, are the very ideas they are, 
and that they are not other ideas which he calls red or square. Nor can any 
maxim or proposition in the world make him know it clearer or surer than he 
did before, and without any such general rule. This then is the first agree- 
ment or disagreement, which the mind perceives in its ideas ; which it always 
perceives at first sight : and if there ever happen any doubt about it, it will 
always be found to be about the names, and not the ideas themselves, whose 
identity and diversity will always be perceived, as soon and as clearly as the 
ideas themselves are, nor can it possibly be otherwise. 

Sect. 5. 2. Relative. — Secondly, the next sort of agreement or disagree- 
ment the mind perceives in any of its ideas, may, I think, be called relative, 
and is nothing but the perception of the relation between any two ideas, of 
what kind soever, whether substances, modes, or any other. For since all 
distinct ideas must eternally be known not to be the same, and so be univer- 
sally and constantly denied one of another, there could be no room for any 
positive knowledge at all, if we could not perceive any relation between our 
ideas, and find out the agreement or disagreement they have one with anoth- 
er, in several ways the mind takes of comparing them. 

Sect. 6. 3. Of coexistence. — Thirdly, The third sort of agreement, or dis- 
agreement, to be found in our ideas, which the perception of the mind is em- 
ployed about, is coexistence or non-coexistence in the same subject ; and this 
belongs particularly to substances. Thus, when we pronounce concerning 
gold that is fixed, our knowledge of this truth amounts to no more but this, 
that fixedness, or a power to remain in the fire unconsumed, is an idea that 
always accompanies and is joined with that particular sort of yellowness, 
weight, fusibility, malleableness, and solubility in aqua regia, which make our 
complex idea, signified by the word gold. 

Sect. 7. 4. Of real existence. — Fourthly, the fourth and last sort is that 
of actual, real existence agreeing to any idea. Within these four sorts of 
agreement or disagreement is, I suppose, contained all the knowledge we 
have, or are capable of: for all the inquiries that we can make concerning 
any of our ideas, all that we know or can affirm concerning them, is, that it is, 
or is not, the same with some other ; that it does, or does not, always coexist 
with some other idea in the same subject, that it has this or that relation to 
some other idea ; or that it has a real existence without the mind. Thus 
blue is not yellow, is of identity : two triangles upon equal bases between two 
parallels are equal, is of relation: iron is susceptible of magnetical impres- 
sions, is of coexistence : God is, is of real existence. Though identity and 
coexistence are truly nothing but relations, yet they are so peculiar ways of 
agreement or disagreement of our ideas, that they deserve well to be consid- 

faitb still stands upon its own basis, which is not at all altered by it; and every 
article of that has just the same unmoved foundation, and the very same credibility, 
that it had before. So that, my lord, whatever I have said about certainty, and 
how much soever I may be out in it, if I am mistaken, your lordship has no reason 
to apprehend any danger to any article of faith from thence; every one of them 
stands upon the same bottom it did before, out of the reach of what belongs to 
knowledge and certainly. And thus much of my way of certainty by ideas; which, 
1 hope, will satisfy your lordship how far it is from being dangerous to any article 
of the Christian faith whatsoev -r 



Ch. L OF KNOWLEDGE. 341 

ered as distinct heads, and not under relation in general ; since they are so 
different grounds of affirmation and negation, as will easily appear to any one, 
who will but reflect on what is said in several places of this essay. 1 should 
now proceed to examine the several degrees of our knowledge, but that it is 
necessary 'first to consider the different acceptations of the word knowledge. 
Sect. 8. Knowledge actual or habitual. — There are several ways wherein 
the mind is possessed of truth, each of which is called knowledge. 

1 . There is actual knowledge, which is the present view the mind has of 
the agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas, or of the relation they have 
one to another. 

2. A man is said to know any proposition, which having been once laid 
before hs thoughts, he evidently perceived the agreement or disagreement of 
the ideas whereof it consists ; and so lodged it in his memory, that when- 
ever that proposition comes again to be reflected on, he, without doubt or hesi- 
tation, embraces the right side, assents to, and is certain of the truth of it. 
This, I think, one may call habitual knowledge : and thus a man may be said 
to know all those truths which are lodged in his memory, by a foregoing 
clear and full perception, whereof the mind is assured past doubt, as often as 
it has occasion to reflect on them. For our finite understandings being able 
to think clearly and distinctly but on one thing at once, if men had no know- 
ledge of any more than what they actually thought on, they would all be very 
ignorant ; and he that knew most would know but one truth, that being all 
he was able to think on at one time. 

Sect. 9. Habitual knowledge twofold. — Of habitual knowledge, there are 
also, vulgarly speaking, two degrees : 

First, the one is of such truths laid up in the memory, as, whenever they 
occur to the mind, it actually perceives the relation is between those ideas. 
And this is all those truths whereof we have an intuitive knowledge, where 
the ideas themselves, by an immediate view, discover their agreement or dis- 
agreement one with another. 

Secondly, the other is of such truths, whereof the mind having been con- 
vinced, it retains the memory of the conviction without the proofs. Thus a 
man that remembers certainly that he once perceived the demonstration, that 
the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones, is certain that he 
knows it, because he cannot doubt the truth of it. In his adherence to a truth, 
where the demonstration by which it was at first known is forgot, though a 
man may be thought rather to believe his memory than really to know, and 
this way of entertaining a truth seemed formerly to me like something be- 
tween opinion and knowledge ; a sort of assurance which exceeds bare belief, 
for that relies on the testimony of another : yet upon a due examination I 
find it comes not short of perfect certainty, and is in effect true knowledge. 
That which is apt to mislead our first thoughts into a mis'ake in this matter 
is, that the agreement or disagreement of the ideas in this case is not per- 
ceived, as it was at first, by an actual view of all the intermediate ideas, 
whereby the agreement or disagreement of those in the proposition was at 
first perceived ; but by other intermediate ideas, that show the agreement or 
disagreement of the ideas contained in the proposition whose certainty we 
remember. For example, in this proposition, that the three angles of a tri- 
angle are equal to two right ones, one who has seen and clearly perceived the 
demonstration of this truth knows it to be true, when that demonstration is 
gone out of his mind ; so that at present it is not actually in view, and pos- 
sibly cannot be recollected : but he knows it in a different way from what lie 
did before. The agreement of the two ideas joined in that proposition is per- 
ceived, but it is by the intervention of other ideas than those which at first 
produced that perception. He remembers, i. e. he knows (for remembrance 
is but the reviving of some past knowledge) that he was once certain of the 
truth of this proposition, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two 
right ones. The immutability of the same relations between the same ini 
mutabie things, is now the idea that shows him that if the three angles of i 



342 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

triangle were once equal to two right ones, they will always be equal to two 
right ones. And hence he comes to be certain, that what was once true in 
the case, is always true ; what ideas once agreed, will always agree ; and con- 
sequently what he once knew to be true, he will always know to be true, as 
long as he can remember that he once knew it. Upon this ground it is, that 
particular demonstrations in mathematics afford general knowledge. If then 
the perception that the same ideas will eternally have the same habitudes and 
relations, be not a sufficient ground of knowledge, there could be no know- 
ledge of general propositions in mathematics ; for no mathematical demon- 
stration would be any other than particular : and when a man had demonstra- 
ted any proposition concerning one triangle or circle, his knowledge would 
not reach beyond that particular diagram. If he would extend it further, he 
must renew his demonstration in another instance, before he could know it 
to be true in another like triangle, and so on : by which means one could nev- 
er come to the knowledge of any general propositions. Nobody, I think, can 
deny that Mr. Newton certainly knows any proposition, that he now at any 
time reads in his book, to be true ; though he has not in actual view that ad- 
mirable chain of intermediate ideas, whereby he at first discovered it to be 
true. Such a memory as that, able to retain such a train of particulars, may 
be well thought beyond the reach of human faculties ; when the very discov- 
ery, perception, and laying together that wonderful connexion of ideas, is 
found to surpass most readers' comprehension. But yet it is evident, the 
author himself knows the proposition to be true, remembering he once saw 
the connexion of those ideas, as certainly as he knows such a man wounded 
another, remembering that he saw him run him through. But because the 
memory is not always so clear as actual perception, and does in all men more 
or less decay in length of time, this among other differences is one, which 
shows that demonstrative knowledge is much more imperfect than intuitive, 
as we shall see in the following chapter. 



CHAPTER II. 

OF THE DEGREES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 

Sect. 1. Intuitive. — All our knowledge consisting, as I have said, in the 
view the mind has of its own ideas, which is the utmost light and greatest 
certainty we, with our faculties, and in our way of knowledge, are capable of; 
it may not be amiss to consider a little the degrees of its evidence. The dif- 
ferent clearness of our knowledge seems to me to lie in the different way of, 
perception the mind has of the agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas. 
For if we will reflect on our own ways of thinking, we shall find that some- 
times the mind perceives the agreement or disagreement of two ideas immedi- 
ately by themselves, without the intervention of any other: and this, I think, 
we may call intuitive knowledge. For in this the mind is at no pains of 
proving or examining, but perceives the truth, as the eye doth light, only by 
being directed towards it. Thus the mind perceives that white is not black, 
that a circle is not a triangle, that three are more than two, and equal to one 
and two. Such kind of truths the mind perceives at the first sight of the ideas 
together, by bare intuition, without the intervention of any other idea ; and 
this kind of knowledge is the clearest and most certain that human frailty is 
capable of. This part of knowledge is irresistible, and like bright sunshine, 
forces itself immediately to be perceived, as soon as ever the mind turns its 
view that way; and leaves no room for hesitation, doubt, or examination, 
out the mind is presently filled with the clear light of it. It is on this intui- 
tion that depends all the certainty and evidence of all our knowledge ; which 
certainty every one finds to be so great, that he cannot imagine, and there 



Ch. 2. DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE. 343 

fore not require a greater : for a man cannot conceive himself capable of a 
greater certainty, than to know that any idea in his mind is such as he per- 
ceives it to be ; and that two ideas, wherein he perceives a difference, are dif- 
ferent, and not precisely the same. He that demands a greater certainty than 
.his, demands he knows not what, and shows only that he has a mind to be a 
sceptic, without being able to be so; Certainty depends so wholly on this in- 
tuition, that in the next degree of knowledge, which I call demonstrative, this 
intuition is necessary in all the connexions of the intermediate ideas, with- 
out which w T e cannot attain knowledge and certainty. 

Sect. 2. Demonstrative. — The next degree of knowledge is, where the 
mind perceives the agreement or disagreement of any ideas, but not immedi- 
ately. Though wherever the mind perceives the agreement or disagreement 
of any of its ideas, there be certain knowledge; yet it does not always hap- 
pen that the mind sees that agreement or disagreement which there is between 
them, even where it is discoverable : and in that case remains in ignorance, 
and at most gets no farther than a probable conjecture. The reason why the 
mind cannot always perceive presently the agreement or disagreement of two 
ideas is, because those ideas, concerning whose agreement or disagreement 
the inquiry is made, cannot by the mind be so put together as to show it. 
In this case, then, when the mind cannot so bring its ideas together, as by their 
immediate comparison, and as it were juxta-position, or application one to 
another, to perceive their agreement or disagreement, it is fain, by the inter- 
vention of other ideas, (one or more, as it happens) to discover the agreement 
or disagreement which it searches ; and this is that which we call reasoning. 
Thus the mind being willing to know the agreement or disagreement in big- 
ness between the three angles of a triangle and two right ones, cannot by an 
immediate view and comparing them do it : because the three angles of a tri- 
angle cannot be brought at once, and be compared with any one or two an- 
gles : and so of this the mind has no immediate, no intuitive knowledge. 
In this case the mind is fain to find out some other angles, to which the three 
angles of a triangle have an equality ; and, finding those equal to two right 
ones, comes to know their equality to two right ones. 

Sect. 3. Depends on proofs. — Those intervening ideas which serve to 
show the agreement of any two others, are called proofs ; and where the 
agreement and disagreement is by this means plainly and clearly perceived, 
it is called demonstration, it being shown to the understanding, and the mind 
made to see that it is so. A quickness in the mind to find out these interme- 
diate ideas (that shall discover the agreement or disagreement of any other) 
and to apply them right is, I suppose, that which'is called sagacity. 

Sect. 4. But not so easy. — This knowledge by intervening proofs, though 
it be certain, yet the evidence of it is not altogether so clear and bright, nor 
the assent so ready, as in intuitive knowledge. For though, in demonstra- 
tion, the mind does at last perceive the agreement or disagreement of the 
ideas it considers ; yet it is not without pains and attention : there must be 
more than one transient view to find it. A steady application and pursuit 
are required to this discovery : and there must be a progression by steps and 
degrees, before the mind can in this way arrive at certainty, and come to per- 
ceive the agreement or repugnancy between two ideas that need proofs, and 
the use of reason to show it. 

Sect. 5. Not without precedent doubt. — Another difference between in- 
tuitive and demonstrative knowledge is, that though in the latter all doubt be 
removed, when by the intervention of the intermediate ideas the agreement 
or disagreement is perceived ; yet before the demonstration there was a doubt, 
which in intuitive knowledge cannot happen to the mind, that has its faculty 
of perception left to a degree capable of distinct ideas, no more than it can be 
a doubt to the eye (that can distinctly see white and black) whether this ink 
and this paper be all of a colour. If there be sight in the eyes, it will at 
first glimpse, without hesitation, perceive the words printed on this paper dif- 
ferent from the colour of the paper : and so if the mind have the faculty of 



344 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

distinct perceptions, it will perceive the agreement or disagreement of those 
ideas that produce intuitive knowledge. If the eyes have lost the faculty of 
seeing, or the mind of perceiving, we in vain inquire after the quickness of 
sight in one, or clearness of perception in the other. 

Sect. 6. Not so clear. — It is true, the perception produced by demonstra- 
tion is also very clear, yet it is often with a great abatement of that evident 
lustre and full assurance that always accompany that which I call intuitive ; 
like a face reflected by several mirrors one to another, where, as long as it 
retains the similitude and agreement with the object, it produces a knowledge ; 
but it is still in every successive reflection, with a lessening of that perfect 
clearness and distinctness which is in the first ; till at last, after many removes, 
it has a great mixture of dimness, and is not at first sight so knowable, es- 
pecially to weak eyes. Thus it is with knowledge made out by a long train 
of proof. 

Sect. 7. Each step must have intuitive evidence. — Now in every step 
reason makes in demonstrative knowledge, there is an intuitive knowledge 
of that agreement or disagreement it seeks with the next intermediate idea, 
which it uses as a proof: for if it were not so, that yet would need a proof; 
since without the perception of such agreement or disagreement, there is no 
knowledge produced. If it be perceived by itself, it is intuitive knowledge : 
if it cannot be perceived by itself, there is need of some intervening idea, as a 
common measure to show their agreement or disagreement. By which it is 
plain, that every step in reasoning that produces knowledge has intuitive cer- 
tainty ; which when the mind perceives, there is no more required, but to re- 
member it, to make the agreement or disagreement of the ideas, concerning 
which we inquire, visible and certain. So that to make any thing a demon- 
stration, it is necessary to perceive the immediate agreement of the inter- 
vening ideas, whereby the agreement or disagreement of the two ideas under 
examination (whereof the one is always the first, and the other the last in the 
account) is found. This intuitive perception of the agreement or disagree- 
ment of the intermediate ideas, in each step and progression of the demon- 
stration, must also be carried exactly in the mind, and a man must be sure 
that no part is left out ; which, because in long deductions, and the use of 
many proofs, the memory does not always so readily and exactly retain ; 
therefore it comes to pass, that this is more imperfect than intuitive know- 
ledge, and men embrace often falsehood for demonstrations. 

Sect. 8. Hence the mistake " ex pracognitis et prceconcessis." — The ne- 
cessity of this intuitive knowledge, in each step of scientifical or demonstra- 
tive reasoning, gave occasion, I imagine, to that mistaken axiom, that all 
reasoning was "ex praecognitis et prseconcessis ;" which how far it is mis- 
taken, I shall have occasion to show more at large, when I come to consider 
propositions, and particularly those propositions which are called maxims; 
and to show that it is by a mistake that they are supposed to be the founda- 
tions of all our knowledge and reasonings. 

Sect. 9. Demonstration not limited to quantity. — It has been generally 
taken for granted, that mathematics alone are capable of demonstrative cer- 
tainty : but to have such an agreement or disagreement, as may intuitively 
be perceived, being, as I imagine, not the privilege of the ideas of number, 
extension, and figure alone, it may possibly be the want of due method and 
application in us, and not of sufficient evidence in things, that demonstration 
has been thought to have so little to do in other parts of knowledge, and 
been scarce so much as aimed at by any but mathematicians. For whatever 
ideas we have, wherein the mind can perceive the immediate agreement or 
disagreement that is between them, there the mind is capable of intuitive 
knowledge ; and where it can perceive the agreement or disagreement of any 
two ideas, by an intuitive perception of the agreement or disagreement they 
have with any intermediate ideas, there the mind is capable of demonstration, 
which is not limited to ideas of extension, figure, number, and their modes. 

Skct. 10. Why it has been so thought. — The reason why it has been ge 



Ch. 2. DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE. 345 

nerally sought for, and supposed to be only in those, I imagine has been not 
only the general usefulness of those sciences ; but because, in comparing their 
equality or excess, the modes of numbers have every the least difference very 
clear and perceivable : and though in extension every the least excess is not 
so perceptible, yet the mind has found out ways to examine and discover de- 
monstratively, the just equality of two angles, or extensions, or figures : and 
both these, i. e. numbers and figures, can be set down by visible and lasting 
marks, wherein the ideas under consideration are perfectly determined ; which 
for the most part they are not, where they are marked only by names and 
words. 

Sect. 11. But in other simple ideas, whose modes and differences are made 
and counted by degrees, and not quantity, we have not so nice and accurate 
a distinction of their differences, as to perceive and find ways to measure their 
just equality, or the least differences. For those other simple ideas, being 
appearances or sensations, produced in us by the size, figure, number, and 
motion of minute corpuscles singly insensible ; their different degrees also 
depend upon the variation of some or all of those causes : which since it 
cannot be observed by us in particles of matter, whereof each is too subtile 
to be perceived, it is impossible for us to have any exact measures of the 
different degrees of these simple ideas. For supposing the sensation or idea 
we name whiteness, be produced in us by a certain number of globules, which, 
having a verticity about their own centres, strike upon the retina of the eye 
with a certain degree of rotation, as well as progressive swiftness ; it will 
hence easily follow, that the more the superficial parts of any body are so 
ordered, as to reflect the greater number of globules of light, and to give them 
the proper rotation, which is fit to produce this sensation of white in us, the 
more white will that body appear, that from an equal space sends to the retina 
the greater number of such corpuscles, with that peculiar sort of motion. I 
do not say, that the nature of light consists in very small round globules, nor 
jf whiteness in such a texture of parts as gives a certain rotation to these 
globules, when it reflects them ; for I am not now treating physically of light 
or colours : but this, I think, I may say, that I cannot (and I would be glad 
any one would make intelligible that he did) conceive how bodies without us 
can any ways affect our senses, but by the immediate contact of the sensible 
bodies themselves, as in tasting and feeling, or the impulse of some insensi- 
ble particles coming from them, as in seeing, hearing, and smelling ; by the 
different impulse of which parts, caused by their different size, figure, and 
motion, the variety of sensations is produced in us. 

Sect. 12. Whether then they be globules, or no, — or whether they have a 
verticity about their own centres that produces the idea of whiteness in us, — 
this is certain, that the more particles of light are reflected from a body, fitted 
to give them that peculiar motion, which produces the sensation of whiteness 
in us, — and possibly, too, trie quicker that peculiar motion is, — the whiter 
does the body appear from which the greater number are reflected, as is evi- 
dent in the same piece of paper put in the sunbeams; in the shade, and in a 
dark hole ; in each of which it will produce in us the idea of whiteness in far 
different degrees. 

Sect. 13. Not knowing, therefore, what number of particles, nor what 
motion of them is fit to produce any precise degree of whiteness, we cannot 
demonstrate the certain equality of any two degrees of whiteness, because we 
■ have no certain standard to measure them by, nor means to distinguish every 
the least real difference, the only help we have being from our senses, which 
in this point fail us. But where the difference is so great as to produce in the 
mind clearly distinct ideas, whose differences can be perfectly retained, there 
these ideas or colours, as we see in different kinds, as blue and red, are as 
capable of demonstration as ideas of number and extension. What I have 
here said of whiteness and colours, I think, holds true in all secondary quali- 
ties, and their modes. 

Sect. 14. Sensitive knowledge of particular existence. — These two, viz. 



T46 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4 

intuition and demonstration, are the degrees of our knowledge ; whatever 
«. omes short of one of these, with what assurance soever embraced, is but 
faith, or opinion, but not knowledge, at least in all general truths. There 
is, indeed, another perception of the mind, employed about the particular 
existence of finite beings without us ; which going beyond bare probability, 
and yet not reaching perfectly to either of the foregoing degrees of certainty, 
passes under the name of knowledge. There can be nothing more certain 
than that the idea we receive from an external object is in our minds ; this is 
intuitive knowledge. But whether there be any thing more than barely that 
idea in our minds, whether we can thence certainly infer the existence of any 
thing without us, which corresponds to that idea, is that whereof some men 
think there may be a question made ; because men may have such ideas in 
their minds, when no such thing exists, no such object affects their senses. 
But yet here, I think, we are provided with an evidence, that puts us past 
doubting: for I ask anyone, whether he be not invincibly conscious to him- 
self of a different perception, when he looks on the sun by day, and thinks 
on it by night ; when he actually tastes wormwood, or smells a rose, or only 
thinks on that savour or odour 1 We as plainly find the difference there is 
between an idea revived in our minds by our own memory, and actually coming 
in our minds by our senses, as we do between any two distinct ideas. If 
any one say, a dream may do the same thing, and all these ideas may be 
produced in us without any external objects ; he may please to dream that 
I make him this answer;!. That it is no great matter, whether I remove 
this scruple or no : where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no 
use, truth and knowledge nothing. 2. That I believe he will allow a very 
manifest difference between dreaming of being in the fire, and being actually 
in it. But yet, if he be resolved to appear so sceptical as to maintain, that 
what I call being actually in the fire is nothing but a dream, and we cannot 
thereby certainly know that any such thing as fire actually exists without 
us ; I answer, that we certainly finding that pleasure or pain follows upon the 
application of certain objects to us, whose existence we perceive, or dream 
that we perceive, by our senses ; this certainty is as great as our happiness 
or miseiy, beyond which we have no concernment to know, or to be. So 
that, I think, we may add to the two former sorts of knowledge, this also, 
of the existence of particular external objects, by that perception and con- 
sciousness we have of the actual entrance of ideas from them, and allow 
these three degrees of knowledge, viz. intuitive, demonstrative, and sensi- 
tive : in each of which there are different degrees and ways of evidence and 
certainty. 

Sect. 15. Knowledge not always clear, where the ideas are so. But since 
our knowledge is founded on, and employed about, our ideas only, will it not 
follow from thence, that it is conformable to our ideas ; and that where our 
ideas are clear and distinct, or obscure and confused, our knowledge will be 
so too 1 To which I answer, no : for our knowledge consisting in the per- 
ception of the agreement or disagreement of any two ideas, its clearness or 
obscurity consists in the clearness or obscurity of that perception, and not in 
the clearness or obscurity of the ideas themselves ; v. g. a man that has as 
clear ideas of the angles of a triangle, and of equality to two right ones, as 
any mathematician in the world, may yet have but a very obscure perception of 
their agreement; and so have but a very obscure knowledge of it. But ideas, 
which by reason of their obscurity or otherwise are confused, cannot produce 
any clear or distinct knowledge ; because as far as any ideas are confused, 
so far the mind cannot perceive clearly, whether they agree or disagree 
Or to express the same thing in a way less apt to be misunderstood ; he that 
hath not determined ideas to the words he uses, cannot make propositions 
of them, of whose truth he can be certain. 



Ch. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 347 

CHAPTER III. 

OF THE EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 

Sect. 1. Knowledge, as has been said, lying in the perception of agree- 
ment or disagreement of any of our ideas, it follows from hence, that, 

1. No farther than we have ideas. — First, we can have knowledge no far- 
ther than we have ideas. 

Sect. 2. 2. No farther than we can -perceive their agreement or dis- 
agreement. — Secondly, that we can have no knowledge farther than we can 
have perception of their agreement or disagreement. Which perception be- 
ing, 1. Either by intuition, or the immediate comparing any two ideas ; or, 
2. By reason, examining the agreement or disagreement of two ideas, by the 
intervention of some others ; or, 3. By sensation, perceiving the existence 
of particular things : hence it also follows, 

Sect. 3. 3. Intuitive knowledge extends itself not to all the relations of 
all our ideas. — Thirdly, that we cannot have an intuitive knowledge that 
shall extend itself to all our ideas, and all that we would know about them ; 
because we cannot examine and perceive all the relations they have one to 
another, by juxta-position, or an immediate comparison one with another. Thus 
having the ideas of an obtuse and an acute angled triangle, both drawn from 
equal bases, and between parallels, I can, by intuitive knowledge, perceive 
the one not to be the other, but cannot that way know whether they be equal 
or no : because their agreement or disagreement in equality can never be 
perceived by an immediate comparing them : the difference of figure makes 
their parts incapable of an exact immediate application ; and therefore there 
is need of some intervening qualities to measure them by, which is demon- 
stration, or rational knowledge. 

Sect. 4. 4. Nor demonstrative knowledge. — Fourthly, it also follows, from 
what is above observed, that our rational knowledge cannot reach to the 
whole extent of our ideas ; because between two different ideas we would ex- 
amine, we cannot always find such mediums, as we can connect one to an- 
other with an intuitive knowledge, in all the parts of the deduction; and 
wherever that fails, we come short of knowledge and demonstration. 

Sect. 5. 5. Sensitive knowledge narrower than either. — Fifthly, sensitive 
knowledge reaching no farther than the existence of things actually present 
to our senses, is yet much narrower than either of the former. 

Sect. 6. 6. Our knowledge therefore narrower than our ideas. — From all 
which it is evident, that the extent of our knowledge comes not only short of 
the reality of things, but even of the extent of our own ideas. Though our 
knowledge be limited to our ideas, and cannot exceed them either in extent 
or perfection ; and though these be> very narrow bounds, in respect of the 
extent of all being, and far short of what we may justly imagine to be in 
some even created understandings, not tied down to the dull and narrow in- 
formation which is to be received from some few, and not very acute ways of 
perception, such as are our senses ; yet it would be well with us if our know- 
ledge were but as large as our ideas, and there were not many doubts and 
inquiries concerning the ideas we have, whereof we are not, nor I believe 
ever shall be, in this world, resolved. Nevertheless, I do not question but 
that human knowledge, under the present circumstances of our beings and 
constitutions, may be carried much farther than it hitherto has been, if men 
would sincerely, and with freedom of mind, employ all that industry and la- 
bour of thought, in improving the means of discovering truth, which they do 
for the colouring or support of falsehood, to maintain a system, interest, or 
party, they are once engaged in. But yet, after all, I think I may without 
injury to human perfection, be confident, that our knowledge would never 



348 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

reach to all we might desire to know concerning those ideas we have ; nor be 
able to surmount all the difficulties, and resolve all the questions that might 
arise concerning any of them. We have the ideas of a square, a circle, and 
equality ; and yet, perhaps, shall never be able to find a circle equal to a 
square, and certainly know that it is so. We have the ideas of matter and 
thinking, (2) but possibly shall never be able to know, whether any mere ma- 

(2) Against that assertion of Mr Locke, that possibly we shall never be able to 
know whether any mere material being thinks or no, &c. the bishop of Worcester 
argues thus : If this be true, then, for all that we can know by our ideas of matter 
and thinking, matter may have a power of thinking: and, if this hold, then it is 
impossible to prove a spiritual substance in us from the idea of thinking: for how 
can we be assured by our ideas, that God hath not given such a power of thinking to 
matter so disposed as our bodies are? especially since it is said*, " that, in respect 
to our notions, it is not much more remote from our comprehension to conceive 
that God can, if he pleases, superadd to our idea of matter a faculty of thinking, 
than that he should superadd to it another substance, with a faculty of thinking." 
Whoever asserts this can never prove a spiritual substance in us from a faculty of 
thinking, because he cannot know, from the idea of matter and thinking, that mat- 
ter so disposed cannot think: and he cannot be certain, that God hath not framed 
the matter of our bodies so as to be capable of it. 

To which Mr Locke answers thusf: Here your lordship argues, that upon my 
principles it cannot be proved that there is a spiritual substance in us. To which 
give me leave, with submission, to say, that I think it may be proved from my 
principles, and I think I have done it; and the proof in my book stands thus : first, 
we experiment in ourselves thinking. The idea of this action or mode of thinking 
is inconsistent with the idea of self-subsistence, and therefore has a necessary con- 
nexion with a support or subject of inhesion: the idea of that support is what we 
call substance; and so from thinking experimented in us, we have a proof of a 
thinking substance in us, which in my sense is a spirit. Against this your lord- 
ship will argue, that by what I have said of the possibility that God may, if he 
pleases, superadd to matter a faculty of thinking, it can never be proved that there 
js a spiritual substance in us, because, upon that supposition, it is possible it may 
be a material substance that thinks in us. I grant it; but add, that the general idea 
of substance being the same every where, the modification of thinking, or the power 
of thinking, joined to it, makes it a spirit, without considering what other modi- 
fications it has, as, whether it has the modification of solidity, or no. As, on the 
other side, substance, thai has the modification of solidity, is matter, whether it 
has the modification of thinking or no. And therefore, if your lordship means by 
a spiritual, an immaterial substance, I grant I have not proved, nor upon my prin- 
ciples can it be proved (your lordship meaning, as I think you do, demonstratively 
proved), that there is an immaterial substance in us that thinks. Though I pre- 
sume, from what I have said about this supposition of a system of matter, think- 
ing! (which there demonstrates that God is immaterial) will prove it in the highest 
degree probable, that the thinking substance in us is immaterial. But your lord- 
ship thinks not probably enough, and by charging the want of demonstration upon 
my principle, that the thinking thing in us is immaterial, your lordship seems to 
conclude it demonstrable from principles of philosophy. That demonstration I 
should with joy receive from your lordship, or any one. For though all the great 
ends of morality and religion are well enough secured without it, as I have shown§, 
yet it would be a great advance of our knowledge in nature and philosophy. 

To what I have said in my book, to show that all the great ends of religion and 
morality are secured barely by the immortality of the soul, without a necessary 
supposition that the soul is immaterial, I crave leave to add, that immortality may 
and shall be annexed to that, which in its own nature is neither immaterial nor 
immortal, as the apostle expressly declares in these words||, For this corruptible 
must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 

* Essay of Human Understanding, b. 4. c. 3. sect. 6. 

f In his first letter to the Bishop of Worcester. $ B. 4. c. 10. sect. 16 

§ B. 4. c. 3. sect. 6. fl I Cor. xv. 53. 



Cn. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 349 

terial being thinks, or no ; it being impossible for us, by the contemplation of 
our own ideas without revelation, to discover, whether omnipotency has not 
given to some systems of matter, fitly disposed, a power to perceive and 
think, or else joined and fixed to matter so disposed, a thinking immaterial 

Perhaps my using the word spirk for a thinking 1 substance, without excluding* 
materiality out of it, will be thought too great a liberty, and such as deserves cen- 
sure, because I leave immateriality out of the idea I make it a sign of. I readily 
own, that words should be sparingly ventured on in a sense wholly new, and no- 
thing but absolute necessity can excuse the boldness of using any term in a sense 
whereof we can produce no example. But, in the present case, I think I have 
great authorities to justify me. The soul is agreed, on all hands, to be that in us 
which thinks. Anil he that will look into ihe first book of Cicero's Tusculan 
Questions, and into the sixth book of Virgil's JEneid, will find, that these two 
great men, who of all the Romans best understood philosophy, thought, or at least 
did not deny, the soul to be a subtile matter, which might come under the name of 
aura, or ignis, or sether, and this soul they both of them called spiritus: in the no- 
tion of which, it is plain, they included only thought and active motion, without 
the total exclusion of matter. Whether they thought right in this, I do not say; 
that is not the question; but whether they spoke properly, when they called an 
active, thinking, subtile substance, out of which they excluded only gross and pal- 
pable matter, spiritus, spirit. I think lhat nobody will deny, that if any among the 
Romans can be allowed to speak properly, Tully and Virgil are the two who may 
most securely be depended on for it: and one of them, speaking of the soul, says, 
Durn spiritus hos reget artus; and the other, Vita continetur corpore et spiritu. 
Where it is plain, by corpus, he means (as generally every where) only gross 
matter that may be felt and handled, as appears by these words, si cor, aut san- 
guis, aut cerebrum est animus; certe, quoniam est corpus, interibit cum reliquo 
corpore; si aniraa est, forte dissipabitur; si ignis, extinguetur, Tusc. Qusest. 1. 1. 
c. 11. Here Cicero opposes corpus to ignis and anima, i. e. aura, or breath. 
And the foundation of that his distinction of the soul, from that which he calls 
corpus, or body, he gives a little lower in these words, tanta ejus tenuitas ut fugiat 
aciem, ib. c. 22. Nor was it the heathen world alone that had this notion of spirit; 
the most enlightened of all the ancient people of God, Solomon himself, speaks 
after the same manner*: That which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts, even 
one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other, yea, they have all 
one spirit. So I translate the Hebrew word OH here, for so I find it translated the 
very next verse but onef: who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and 
the spirit of the beast that goeth downwards to the earth ? In which places it is 
plain that Solomon applies ihe word PM and our translators of him the word 
spirit, to a substance, out of which materiality was not wholly excluded, unless the 
spirit of a beast that goeth downwards to the earth be immaterial. Nor did the 
way of speaking in our Saviour's time vary from this: St Luke tells us|, that when 
our Saviour, after his resurrection, stood in the midst of them, they were affrighted, 
and supposed they had seen <wvsu/uct. the Greek word which always answers to 
spirit in English; and so the translators of the Bible render it here, they supposed 
that they had seen a spirit. But our Saviour says to. them, Behold my hands and 
my feet, that it is I myself; handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones 
as you see me have. Which words of our Saviour put the same distinction be- 
tween body and spirit, that Cicero did in the place above cited, viz. That the one 
-#&s a gross compages that could be felt and handled; and the other, such as Virgil 
describes the ghost or soul of Anchises: 

Ter conatus ibi collo dare brachia circum, 
Ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago, 
Par levibus ventis volucrique simillima somno§. 

1 would not be thought hereby to say, that spirit never does signify a purely 
immaterial substance. In that sense the Scripture, I take it, speaks, when it savs 
God is a spirit; and in that sense I have used it; and in that sense I have prov-ju 

* Eccl. iii. 19. t Eccl. iii. 21. \ Chap. xxiv. 37. §. Lib. vi. 



350 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

substance: it being, in respect of our notions, not much more remote from 
our comprehension to conceive, that God can, if he pleases, superadd to 
matter a faculty of thinking, than that he should superadd to it another sub« 
stance, with a faculty of thinking ; since we know not wherein thinking con- 

frora my principles that there is a spiritual substance; and am certain that them is 
a spiritual immaterial substance: which is, I humbly conceive, a direct answer to 
your lordship's question in the beginning of this argument, viz. How we come to 
be certain that there are spiritual substances, supposing this principle to be true, 
that the simple ideas by sensation and reflection are the sole matter and foundation 
of all our reasoning'' But this hinders not, but that if God, that infinite, omni- 
potent, and perfectly immaterial Spirit, should please to give to a system of very 
subtile matter, sense and motion, it might with propriety of speech be called spirit, 
though materiality were not excluded out of its complex idea. Your lordship 
proceeds, it is said indeed elsewhere*, that it is repugnant to the idea of senseless 
matter, that it should put into itself sense, perception, and knowledge. But this 
doth not reach the present case; which is not what matter can do of itself, but what 
matter prepared by an omnipotent hand can do. And what certainty can we have 
that he hath not done it? We can have none from the ideas, for those are given 
up in this case, and consequently we can have no certainty, upon these principles, 
whether we have any spiritual substance within us or not. 

Your lordship in this paragraph proves, that, from what I say, we can have no 
certainty whether we have any spiritual substance in us or not. If by spiritual 
substance your lordship means an immaterial substance in us, as you speak, I grant 
what your lordship says is true, that it cannot upon these principles be demon- 
strated. But I must orave leave to say at the same time, that upon these principles 
it can be proved, to the highest degree of probability. If by spiritual substance 
your lordship means a thinking substance, I must dissent from your lordship, and 
say, that we can have a certainty, upon my principles, that there is a spiritual sub- 
stance in us. In short, my lord, upon my principles, i. e. from the idea of think- 
ing, we can have a certainty that there is a thinking substance in us; from hence 
we have a certainty that there is an eternal thinking substance. This thinking 
substance, which has been from eternity, I have proved to be immaterial. This 
eternal, immaterial, thinking suustance, has put into us a thinking substance, which, 
whether it be a material or immaterial substance, cannot be infallibly demonstrated 
from our ideas: though from them it maybe proved, that it is to the highest degree 
probable that it is immaterial. 

Again, the bishop of Worcester undertakes to prove from Mr Locke's princi- 
ples, that we may be certain, " That the first eternal thinking being, or omnipotent 
Spirit, cannot, if he would, give to certain systems of created sensible matter, put 
together as he sees fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought." 

To which Mr Locke has made the following answer in his third letter. 

Your first argument I take to be this; that according to me, the knowledge we 
have being by our ideas, and our idea of matter in general being a solid substance, 
and our idea of body, a solid extended figured substance; if I admit matter to be 
capable of thinking, I confound the idea of matter with the idea of a spirit; to 
which I answer, No, no more than I confound the idea of matter with the idea of 
a horse, when I say that matter in general is a solid extended substance; and that a 
horse is a material animal, or an extended solid substance, with sense and spon- 
taneous motion. 

The idea of matter is an extended solid substance; wherever there is such a sub- 
stance, there i3 matter, and the essence of matter, whatever other qualities, not con- 
tained in that essence, it shall please God to superadd to it. For example, God 
creates an extended solid substance, without the superadding any tiling else to it, and 
so we may consider it at rest: to some parts of it he superadds motion, but it has 
still the essence of matter: other parts of it he frames into plants, with all the ex- 
cellencies of vegetation, life and beauty, which is to be found in a rose or peach-tree, 
&c. above the essence of matter, in general, but it is still but matter: to other 
parts hs adds sense and spontaneous motion, and those other properties that are to 

* B. 4. c 10. sect. 5. 



Chap. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. S51 

feists* nor to what sort of substances the Almighty has been pleased to give 
that power, which cannot be in any created being, but merely by the good 
pleasure and bounty of the Creator. For I see no contradiction in it, that 
the first eternal thinking being should, if he pleased, give to certain systems 

be found in an elephant. Hitherto it is not doubted but the power of God may go, 
and that the properties of a rose, a peach, or an elephant, superadded to matter, 
change not the properties of matter; but matter is in these things matter still. But 
if one venture to go one step farther, and say, God may give to matter thought, 
reason, and volition, as well as sense and spontaneous motion, there are men ready 
presently to limit the power of the omnipotent Creator, and tell us he cannot do 
it; because it destroys the essence, or changes the essential properties of matter. 
To make good which assertion, they have no more to say, but that thought and 
reason are not included in the essence of matter. I grant it; but whatever excel- 
lency, not contained in its essence, be superadded to matter, it does not destroy 
the essence of matter, if it leaves it an extended solid substance; wherever that is, 
there is the essence of matter: and if every thing of greater perfection superadded 
to such a substance, destroys the essence of matter, what will become of the essence 
of matter in a plant or an animal, whose properties far exceed those of a mere ex- 
tended solid substance? 

But it is farther urged, that we cannot conceive how matter can think. I grant 
it; but to argue from thence, that God therefore cannot give to matter a faculty of 
thinking, is to say God's oranipotency is limited to a narrow compass, because 
man's understanding is so; and brings down God's infinite power to the size of our 
capacities. If God can give no power to any parts of matter, but what men can 
account for from the essence of matter in general; if all such qualities and proper- 
ties must destroy the essence, or change the essential properties of matter, which 
are to our conceptions above it, and we cannot conceive to be the natural conse- 
quence of that essence: it is plain that the essence of matter is destroyed, and its 
essential properties changed, in most of the sensible parts of this our system. For 
it is visible, that all the planets have revolutions about certain remote centres, which 
I would have any one explain, or make conceivable by the bare essence, or natural 
powers depending on the essence of matter in general, without something added to 
that essence, which we cannot conceive; for the moving of matter in a crooked 
jine, or the attraction of matter by matter; is all that can be said in the case; either 
of which it is above our reach to derive from the essence of matter or body in 
general; though one of these two must unavoidably be allowed to be superadded in 
this instance to the essence of matter in general. The omnipotent Creator advised 
not with us in the making of the world, and his ways are not the less excellent be- 
cause they are past finding out. 

In the next place, the vegetable part of the creation is not doubted to be wholly 
material; and yet he that will look into it will observe excellencies and operations in 
this part of matter which he will not find contained in the essence of matter in 
general, nor be able to conceive how they can be produced by it. And will he 
therefore say, that the essence of matter is destroyed in them because they have 
properties and operations not contained in the essential properties of matter as 
matter, nor explicable by the essence of matter in general? 

Let us advance one step farthei-, and we shall in the animal world meet with yet 
greater perfections and properties, no ways explicable by the essence of matter in 
general. If the omnipotent Creator had not superadded to the earth, which pro- 
duced the irrational animals, qualities far surpassing those of the dull dead earth, 
out of which they were made life, sense, and spontaneous motion, nobler qualities 
Than were before in it, it had still remained rude senseless matter; and if tc the 
individuals of each species he had not superadded a power of propagation, the spe- 
jies had perished with those individuals: but by these essences or properties of 
each species, superadded to the matter which they were made of, the essences or 
properties of matter in general were not destroyed or changed, any more than any 
thing that was in the individuals before was destroyed or changed by the power of 
generation, superadded to them by the first benediction of the Almighty. 

In all such cases, the superinducement of greater perfections and nobler quali- 
ties destroys nothing of the essence or perfections that were there before; unless 



352 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

of created senseless matter, put together, as he thinks fit, some degrees of 
sense, perception, and thought : though, as I think, I have proved, Book 4. ch. 
10. Sect. 14. it is no less than a contradiction to suppose matter (which is 
evidently in its own nature void of sense and thought) should be that eternal 

there can ne showed a manifest repugnancy between them: but all the proof offer- 
ed for that, is only, that we cannot conceive how matter, without such superadded 
perfections, can produce such effects; which is, in truth, no more than to say, mat- 
ter in general, or every part of matter, as matter, has them not; but is no reason to 
prove, that God, if he pleases, cannot superadd them to some parts of matter, unless 
it can be proved to be a contradiction, that God should give to some parts of mat- 
ter qualities and perfections, which matter in general has not; though we cannot 
conceive how matter is invested with them, or how it operates by virtue of those 
new endowments; nor is it to be wondered that we cannot, Avhilst we limit all its 
operations to those qualities it had before, and would explain them by the known 
properties of matter in general, without any such induced perfections. For, if this 
be the right rule of reasoning, to deny a thing to be, because we cannot conceive 
the manner how it comes to be; I shall desire them who use it, to stick to this 
rule, and see what work it will make both in divinity as well as philosophy: and 
whether they can advance any thing more in favour of scepticism. 

For to keep within the present subject of the power of thinking and self-mo- 
tion, bestowed by omnipotent power in some parts of matter: the objection to this 
is, I cannot conceive how matter should think. What is the consequence? Ergo, 
God cannot give it a power to think. Let this stand for a good reason, and then 
proceed in other cases by the same. You cannot conceive how matter can attract 
matter at any distance, much less at the distance of 1,000,000 miles; ergo, God 
cannot give it such a power: you cannot conceive how matter should feel, or move 
itself, or affect an immaterial being, or be moved by it; ergo, God cannot give it 
such powers: which is in effect to deny gravity, and the revolution of the planets 
ahoutthe sun; to make brutes mere machines, without sense or spontaneous mo- 
tion; and to allow man neither sense nor voluntary motion. 

Let us apply this rule one degree farther. You cannot conceive how an ex- 
tended solid substance should think, therefore God cannot make it think: can you 
conceive how your own soul, or any substance, thinks? You find indeed that you 
do think, and so do I: but I want to be told how the action of thinking is per- 
formed: this, I confess, is beyond my conception; and I would be glad any one, 
who conceives it, would explain it to me. God, I find, has given me this faculty; 
and since I cannot but be convinced of his power in this instance, which though 
I every moment experiment in myself, yet I cannot conceive the manner of; Avhat 
would it be less than an insolent absurdity, to deny his power in other like cases 
only for this reason, because I cannot conceive the manner how? 

To explain this matter a little farther: God has created a substance; let it be, 
for example, a solid extended substance. Is God bound to give it, besides being, 
a power of action? that, I think, nobody will say: he therefore may leave it in a 
state of inactivity, and it will be nevertheless a substance; for action is not neces- 
sary to the being of any substance that God does create. God has likewise created 
and made to exist, de novo, an immaterial substance, which will not lose its being 
of a substance, though God should bestow on it nothing more but this bare being, 
without giving it any activity at all. Here are now two distinct substances, the 
one material, the other immaterial, both in a state of perfect inactivity. Now I 
ask, what power God can give to one of these substances (supposing them to retain 
the same distinct natures that they had as substances in their state of inactivity) 
which he cannot give to the other? In that state, it is plain, neither of them thinks; 
for thinking being an action, it cannot be denied, that God can put an end to any 
action of any created substance, without annihilating of the substance whereof it is 
an action; and if it be so, he can also create or give existence to such a substance, 
without giving that substance any action at all. By the same reason it is plain, 
that neither of them can move itself: now, I would ask, why Omnipotency cannot 
give to either of these substances, which are equally in a state of perfect inactivity, 
the same power that it can give to the other? Let it be, for example, that of spon- 



Ch. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. S53 

first thinking Being 1 . What certainty of knowledge can any one have thai 
some perceptions, such as, v. g. pleasure and pain, should not be in some 
bodies themselves, after a certain manner, modified and moved, as well as 
that they should be in an immaterial substance, upon the motions of the parts 

tmeous or self-motion, which is a power that it is supposed God can give to an 
unsolid substance, but denied that he can give to solid substance. 

If it be asked, why they limit the omnipotency of God, in reference to the one 
rather than the other of these substances? all that can be said to it is, that they 
cannot conceive, how the solid substance should ever be able to move itself. And 
as little, say I, are they able to conceive, how a created unsolid substance should 
move itself. But there may be something in an immaterial substance that you do 
not know. I grant it; and in a material one too: for example, gravitation of matter 
towards matter, and in the several proportions observable, inevitably shows that 
there is something in matter that we do not understand, unless we can conceive 
self-motion in matter; or an inexplicable and inconceivable attraction in matter, at 
immense, almost incomprehensible distances; it must therefore be confessed, that 
there is something in solid, as well as in unsolid substances, that we do not under- 
stand. But this we know, that they may each of them have their distinct beings, 
without any activity superadded to them, unless you will deny, that God can take 
from any being its power of acting, which it is probable will be thought too pre- 
sumptuous for any one to do; and I say, it is as hard to conceive self-motion in a 
created immaterial, as in a material being, consider it how you will: and therefore 
this is no reason to deny Omnipotency to be able to give a power of self-motion to 
a material substance if he pleases, as well as to an immaterial; since neither of 
them can have it from themselves, nor can we conceive how it can be in either of 
them. 

The same is visible in the other operation of thinking; both these substances 
may be made, and exist without thought; neither of them has, or can have, the power 
of thinking from itself: God may give it to either of them, according to the good 
pleasure of his omnipotency; and in whichever of them it is, it is equally beyond 
our capacity to conceive how either of these substances thinks. But for that reason 
to deny that God, who had power enough to give them both a being out of nothing, 
can, by the same omnipotency, give them what other powers and perfections he 
pleases, has no better foundation than to deny his power of creation, because we 
«annot conceive how it is performed: and there, at last, this way of reasoning must 
terminate. 

That Omnipotency cannot make a substance to be solid and not solid at the same 
time, I think with due reverence we may say; but that a solid substance may not 
have qualities, perfections, and powers, which have no natural or visibly necessary 
connexion with solidity and extension, is too much for us (who are but of yester- 
day, and know nothing) to be positive in. If God cannot join things together by 
connexions inconceivable to us, we must deny even the consistency and being of 
matter itself; since every particle of it having some bulk, has its parts connected 
by ways inconceivable to us. So that all the difficulties that are raised against the 
thinking of matter, from our ignorance, or narrow conceptions, stand not at all in 
the way of the power of God, if he pleases to ordain it so; nor prove any thing 
against his having endued some parcels of matter, so disposed as he thinks fit, 
with a faculty of thinking, till it can be shown that it contains a contradiction to 
suppose it. 

Though to me sensation be comprehended under '"linking in general, yet, in the 
foregoing discourse, I have spoke of sense in brutes, as distinct from thinking; 
because your lordship, as I remember, speaks of sense in brutes. But here I take 
liberty to observe, that if your lordship allows brutes to have sensation, it will 
follow either that God can and doth give to some parcels of matter a power of 
Derception and thinking; or that all animals have immaterial, and consequently, 
according to your lordship, immortal souls as well as men; and to say that fleas 
*nd mites, &c. have immortal souls as well as men, will possibly be looked on as 
joing a great way to serve an hypothesis. 

I have been pretty large in making this matter plain, that they who are so for- 
2U 



354 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

of body ] Body, as far as we can conceive, being able only to strike and 
affect body ; and motion, according to the utmost reach of our ideas, being 
able to produce nothing but motion : so that when we allow it to produce 
pleasure or pain, or the idea of a colour or sound, we are fain to quit our 

ward to bestow hard censures or names on the opinions of those who differ from 
ihera, may consider whether sometimes they are not more due to their own; and 
that they may be persuaded a little to temper that heat, which, supposing the truth 
in their current opinions, gives them (as they think) a right to lay what imputations 
they please on those who would fairly examine the grounds they stand upon. For 
talking with a supposition and insinuations, that truth and knowledge, nay, and 
religion too, stand and fall with their systems, is at best but an imperious way of 
begging the question, and assuming to themselves, under the pretence of zeal for 
the cause of God, a title to infallibility. It is very becoming that men's zeal for 
truth should go as far as their proofs, but not go for proofs themselves. He that 
attacks received opinions with any thing but fair arguments, may, I own, be justly 
-■suspected not to mean well, nor to be led by the love of truth; but the same may 
be said of him, too, who so defends them. An error is not the better for being 
common, nor truth the worse for having lain neglected: and if it were put to the 
vote any where in the world, I doubt, as things are managed, whether truth would 
have the majority, at least whilst the authority of men, and not the examination of 
things, must be its measure. The imputation of scepticism, and those broad in- 
sinuations to render what I have writ suspected, so frequent, as if that were the 
great business of all this pains you have been at about me, has made me say thus 
much, my lord, rather as my sense of the way to establish truth in its full force 
and beauty, than that I think the world will need to have any thing said to it, to 
make it distinguish between your lordship's and my design in writing, which there- 
fore I securely leave to the judgment of the reader, and return to the argument in 
hand. 

What I have above said, I take to be a full answer to all that your lordship 
would infer from my idea of matter, of liberty, of identity, and from the power 
of abstx-acting. You ask*, How can my idea of liberty agree with the idea that 
bodies can operate only by motion and impulse? Ans. By the omnipotency of 
God, who can make all things agree, that involve not a contradiction. It is true, 
I sayt, "that bodies operate by impulse, and nothing else." And so I thought 
when I writ it, and can yet conceive no other way of their operation. But I am 
since convinced by the judicious Mr Newton's incomparable book, that it is too 
bold a presumption to limit God's power in this point by my narrow conceptions. 
The gravitation of matter towards matter, by ways inconceivable to me, is not only 
a demonstration that God can, if he pleases, put into bodies powers, and ways of 
operation, above what can be derived from our idea of body, or can be explained 
by what Ave know of matter; but also an unquestionable, and every where visible 
instance, that he has done so. And therefore in the next edition of my book, I 
will take care to have that passage rectified. 

As to self-consciousness, your lordship asksj;, What is there like self-conscious- 
ness in matter? Nothing at all in matter as matter. But that God cannot bestow 
on some parcels of matter the power of thinking, and with it self-consciousness, 
will never be proved by asking§, How is it possible to apprehend that mere body 
should perceive that it doth perceive? The weakness of our apprehension I grant 
in the case: I confess as much as you please, that we cannot conceive how a solid, no, 
nor how an unsolid created substance thinks; but this weakness of our apprehension 
reaches not the power of God, whose weakness is stronger than any thing in men. 

Your argument from abstraction we have in this question||, If it may be in the 
power of matter to think, how comes it to be so impossible for such organized 
bodies as the brutes have, to enlarge their ideas by abstraction? Ans. This seems 
to suppose, that I place thinking within the natural power of matter. If that be 
vour meaning, my lord, I never say, nor suppose, that all matter has naturally in 
it a faculty of thinking, but the direct contrary. But if you mean that certain 

* 1st Answer. + Essay, b. 2. ch. 8. sect. 11. $ lst'Answer. 

§ 1st Answer. | 1st Answer. 



Ch. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 355 

reason, go beyond our ideas, and attribute it wholly to the good pleasure of 
our Maker. For since we must allow he has annexed effects to motion, 
which we can no way conceive motion able to produce, what reason have we 
to conclude, that he could not order them as well to be produced in a subject 

parcels of matter, ordered by the Divine power, as seems fit to him, may be made 
capable of receiving from bis omnipotency the faculty of thinking; that, indeed, 
i say; and that being granted, the answer to your question is easy; since if Omni- 
potency can give thought to any solid substance, it is not hard to conceive, that 
God may give that faculty in a higher or lower degree, as it pleases him, who 
knows what disposition of the subject is suited to such a particular way or degree 
of thinking. 

Another argument, to prove that God cannot endue any parcel of matter with 
the faculty of thinking, is taken from those words of mine*, where I show, by what 
connexion of ideas we may come to knoAv that God is an immaterial substance, 
they are these, "the idea of an eternal actual knowing being, with the idea of im- 
materiality, by the intervention of the idea of matter, and of its actual division, 
divisibility, and want of perception," &c. From whence your lordship thus 
arguesf, here the want of perception is owned to be so essential to matter, that 
God is therefore concluded to be immaterial. Ans. Perception and knowledge in 
that one eternal Being, where it has its source, it is visible must be essentially 
inseparable from it; therefore the actual want of perception in so great a part of 
the particular parcels of matter, is a demonstration, that the first Being, from 
whom perception and knowledge are inseparable, is not matter: how far this makes 
the want of perception an essential property of matter, I will not dispute; it suffices 
that it shows, that perception is not an essential property of matter; and therefore 
matter cannot be that eternal original Being to which perception and knowledge 
are essential. Matter, I say, naturally is without perception; ergo, says your 
lordship, want of perception is an essential property of matter, and God does not 
change the essential properties of things, their nature remaining. From whence 
you infer, that God cannot bestow on any parcel of matter (the nature of matter 
remaining) a faculty of thinking. If the rules of logic, since my days, be not 
changed, I may safely deny this consequence. For an argument that runs thus, 
God does not; ergo, he cannot, I was taught when I first came to the university, 
would not hold. For I never said God did; butf , " that I see no contradiction in 
it, that he should, if he pleased, give to some systems of senseless matter a faculty 
of thinking;" and I know nobody before Des Cartes, that ever pretended to show 
that there was any contradiction in it. So that at worst, my not being able to see 
in matter any such incapacity, as makes it impossible for Omnipotency to bestow 
on it a faculty of thinking, makes me opposite only to the Cartesians. For, as fai* 
as I have seen or heard, the fathers of the Christian church never pretended to de- 
monstrate that matter was incapable to receive a power of sensation, perception, 
and thinking, from the hand of the omnipotent Creator. Let us, therefore, if you 
please, suppose the form of your argumentation right, and that your lordship 
means, God cannot: and then, if your argument be good, it proves, that God could 
not give to Balaam's ass a power to speak to his master as he did; for the want of 
rational discourse being natural to .that species, it is but for your lordship to call it 
an essential property, and then God cannot change the essential properties of things, 
their nature remaining: whereby it is proved, that God cannot, with all his omni- 
potency, give to an ass a power to speak as Balaam's did. 

You say§, my lord, you do not set bounds to God'f omnipotency: for he may, if 
he please, change a body into an immaterial substance, i. e. take away from a sub- 
stance the solidity which it had before, and which made it matter, and then give it 
a faculty of thinking which it had not before, and which makes it a spirit, the same 
substance remaining. For if the substance remains not, body is not changed into 
in immaterial substance, but the solid substance, and all belonging to it, is anni- 
hilated, and an immaterial substance created, which is not a change of one thing 
into another, but the destroying of one, and making another de novo. In this 

* 1st Letter. f 1st Answer. % B. 4. c. 3. sect. 6. § 1st Answer. 



356 ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

we cannot conceive capable of them, as well as in a subject we cannot con- 
ceive the motion of matter can any way operate upon 1 I say not this, that 
I would any way lessen the belief of the soul's immateriality : I am not here 
speaking of probability, but knowledge ; and I think not only, that it he- 
change therefore of a body or material substance into an immaterial, let us observe 
these distinct considerations. 

First, you say, God may, if he pleases, take away from a solid substance soli- 
dity, which is that which makes it a material substance or body; and may make it 
an immaterial substance, i. e. a substance without solidity. But this privation of 
one quality gives it not another; the bare taking away a lower or less noble quality 
does not give it a higher or nobler; that must be the gift of God. For the bare 
privation of one, and a meaner quality, cannot be the position of a higher and 
better; unless any one will say, that cogitation, or the power of thinking, results 
from the nature of substance itself; which if it do, then wberever there is substance, 
there must be cogitation, or a power of thinking. Here, then, upon your lordship's 
own principles, is an immaterial substance without the faculty of thinking. 

In the next place, you will not deny, but God. may give to this substance, thus 
deprived of solidity, a faculty of thinking; for you suppose it made capable of that, 
by being made immaterial; whereby you allow, that the same numerical substance 
may be sometimes wholly incogitative, or without a power of thinking, and at other 
times perfectly cogitative, or endued with a power of thinking. 

Further, you will not deny, but God can give it solidity and make it material 
again. For, I conclude, it will not be denied, that God can make it again what it 
was before. Now I crave leave to ask your lordship, why God, having given to 
this substance the faculty of thinking after solidity was taken from it, cannot re- 
store to it solidity again without taking aAvay the faculty of thinking? When you 
have resolved this, my lord, you will have proved it impossible for God's omnipo- 
tence to give a solid substance a faculty of thinking; but till then, not having proved 
it impossible, and yet denying that God can do it, is to deny that he can do what 
is in itself possible; which, as I humbly conceive, is visibly to set bounds to God's 
omnipotency, though you say here* you do not set bounds to God's omnipotence. 

If I should imitate your lordship's way of writing, I should not omit to bring 
in Epicurus here, and take notice that this was his way, Deum verbis ponere, re 
tollere: and then add, that I am certain you do not think be promoted the great 
ends of religion and morality. For it is with such candid and kind insinuations as 
these, that you bring in both Hobbesf and Spinosa| into your discourse here about 
God's being able, if he please, to give to some parcels of matter, ordered as he 
thinks fit, a faculty of thinking: neither of those authors having, as appears by any 
passages you bring out of them, said any thing to this question, nor having, as it 
seems, any other business here, but by their names skilfully to give that character 
to my book, with which you would recommend it to the world. 

I pretend not to inquire what measure of zeal, nor for what, guides your lord- 
ship's pen in such a way of writing, as yours has all along been with me: only I 
cannot but consider, what reputation it would give to the writings of the fathers 
of the church, if they should think truth required, or religion allowed them to 
imitate such patterns. But God be thanked, there be those among them who do 
not admire such ways of managing the cause of truth or religion; they being sensible 
that if every one, who believes or can pretend he bath truth on his side, is thereby 
authorized, without proof, to insinuate whatever may serve to prejudice men's minds 
against the other side, there will be great ravage made on charity and practice, 
without any gain to truth or knowledge: and that the liberties frequently taken by 
disputants to do so, may have been the cause that the world in all ages has received 
so much harm, and so little advantage from controversies in religion. 

These are the arguments which your lordship has brought to confute one saying 
m my book, by other passages in it; which therefore being all but argumenta ad 
hominem, if they did prove what they do not, are of no other use, than to gain a 
victory over me: a thing, methinks, so much beneath your lordship, that it does 

* 1st Answer. f Ibid. $ Ibid. 



Ch. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 357 

comes the modesty of philosophy not to pronounce magisterially, where we 
want that evidence that can produce knowledge ; but also that it is of use 
to us to discern how far our knowledge does reach, for the state we are at 
present in, not being that of vision, we must, in many things, content our- 

not deserve one of your pages. The question is, whether God can, if he pleases, 
bestow on any parcel of matter, ordered as he thinks fit, a faculty of perception 
and thinking. You say*, you look upon a mistake herein to be of dangerous con- 
sequence as to the great ends of religion and morality. If this be so, my lord, I 
think one may well wonder, wby your lordship has brought no arguments to 
establish the truth itself, which you look on to he of such dangerous consequence 
to be mistaken in; but have spent so many pages only in a personal matter, in 
endeavouring to show, that I had inconsistencies in my book; which if any sucli 
thing had been shown, the question would be still as far from being decided, and 
the danger of mistaking about it as little prevented, as if nothing of all this had 
been said. If therefore your lordship's care of the great ends of religion and mo- 
rality have made you think it necessary to clear this question, the world has reason 
to conclude there is little to be said against that proposition which is to be found 
in my book, concerning the possibility, that some parcels of matter might be so 
ordered by Omnipotence, as to be endued with a faculty of thinking, if God so 
pleased; since your lordship's concern for the promoting the great ends of religion 
and morality has not enabled you to produce one argument against a proposition 
that you think of such dangerous consequence to them. 

And here I crave leave to observe, that though in your title page you promise 
to prove that my notion of ideas is inconsistent with itself (which if it were, it 
could hardly be proved to be inconsistent with any thing else) and with the articles 
of the Christian faith: yet your attempts all along have been to prove me, in some 
passages of my book, inconsistent with myself, without having shown any proposi- 
tion in my book inconsistent with any article of the Christian faith. 

I think your lordship has indeed made use of one argument of your own; but 
it is such an one, that I confess I do not see how it is apt much to promote religion, 
especially the Christian religion, founded on revelation. I shall set down your 
lordship's words, that they may be considered: you sayf, that you are of opinion, 
that the great ends of religion and morality are best secured by the proofs of the 
immortality of the soul from its nature and properties; and which you think prove 
it immaterial. Your lordship does not question whether God can give immortality 
to a material substance; but you say it takes off* very much from the evidence of 
immortality, if it depend wholly upon God's giving that, which of its own nature it 
is not capable of, &c. So likewise you say}:, if a man cannot be certain, but that 
matter may think (as I affirm), then what becomes of the soul's immateriality (and 
consequently immortality) from its operations? But for all this, say I, his assu- 
rance of faith remains on its own basis. Now you appeal to any man of sense, 
whether the finding the uncertainty of his own principles, which he went upon, in 
point of reason, doth not weaken the credibility of these fundamental articles when 
they are considered purely as matters of faith? For before, there was a natural 
credibility in them on account of reason; but by going on wrong grounds of cer- 
tainty, all that is lost, and instead of being certain, he is more doubtful than ever. 
And if the evidence of faith fall so much short of that of reason, it must needs 
have less effect upon men's minds, when the subserviency of reason is taken away: 
as it must be when the grounds of certainty by reason are vanished. Is it at all 
probable, that he who finds his reason deceive him in such fundamental points, 
shall have his faith stand firm and unmovable on the account of revelation? For 
in matters of revelation there must be some antecedent principles supposed, before 
we can believe any thing on the account of it. 

More to the same purpose we have some pages farther, where, from some of my 
words your lordship says§, you cannot but observe, that we have no certainty upon 
my grounds, that self-consciousness depends upon an individual immaterial sub- 
stance, and consequently that a material substance may, according to my princi- 
ples, have self-consciousness in it; at least, that I am not certain of the contrary. 

* 1st Answer. t Ibid. $ 2d Answer. § Ibid. 



358 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

selves with faith and probability; and in the present question, about the im- 
materiality of the soul, if our faculties cannot arrive at demonstrative cer- 
tainty, we need not think it strange. All the great ends of morality and 
religion are well enough secured, without philosophical proofs of the soul's 

Whereupon your lordship bids me consider, whether this doth not a little affect the 
Avhole article of the resurrection. What does all this tend to, but to make the 
world believe that I have lessened the credibility of tbe immortality of the soul, 
and the resurrection, by saying, that though it be most highly probable, that the 
soul is immaterial, yet upon my principles it cannot be demonstrated; because it 
is not impossible to God's omnipotency, if he pleases, to bestow upon some par- 
cels of matter, disposed as he sees fit, a faculty of thinking? 

This your accusation of my lessening the credibility of these articles of faith is 
founded on this, that the article of the immortality of the soul abates of its credi- 
bility, if it be allowed, that its immateriality (which is the supposed proof from 
reason and philosophy of its immortality) cannot be demonstrated from natural 
reason: which argument of your lordship's bottoms, as I humbly conceive, on 
this, that divine revelation abates of its credibility in all those articles it proposes, 
proportionably as human reason fails to support the testimony of God. And all 
that your lordship in those passages has said, when examined, will, I suppose, be 
found to import thus much, viz. Does God propose any thing to mankind to be 
believed? It is very fit and credible to be believed, if reason can demonstrate it 
to be true. But if human reason come short in the case, and cannot make it out, 
its credibility is thereby lessened; which is in effect to say, that the veracity of 
God is not a firm and sure foundation of faith to rely upon, without the concurrent 
testimony of reason; i. e. with reverence be it spoken, God is not to be believed on 
his own word, unless what he reveals be in itself credible, and might be believed 
without him. 

If this be a way to promote religion, the Christian religion, in all its articles, 1 
am not sorry that it is not a way to be found in any of my writings; for I imagine 
any thing like this would (and I should think deserved to) have other titles than 
bare scepticism bestowed upon it, and would have raised no small outcry against 
any one, who is not to be supposed to be in the right in all that he says, and so 
may securely say what he pleases. Such as I, the profanum vulgus, who take 
too much upon us, if we would examine, have nothing to do but to hearken and 
believe, though what he said should subvert the very foundations of the Christian 
faith. 

What I have above observed is so visibly contained in your lordship's argument, 
that when I met with in your answer to my first letter, it seemed so strange for a 
man of your lordship's character, and in a dispute in defence of the doctrine of the 
Trinity, that I could hardly persuade myself, but it was a slip of your pen; but 
when I found it in your second letter* made use of again, and seriously enlarged 
as an argument of weight to be insisted upon, I was convinced that it was a princi- 
ple that you heartily embraced, how little favourable soever it was to the articles 
of the Christian religion, and particularly those which you undertook to defend. 

I desire my reader to peruse the passages as they stand in your letters them- 
selves, and see whether what you say in them does not amount to this: that a reve- 
lation from God is more or less credible, according as it has a stronger or weaker 
confirmation from human reason. For, 

I. Your lordship saysf, you do not question whether God can give immortality 
to a material substance; but you say it takes off very much from the evidence of 
immortality, if it depends wholly upon God's giving that, which of its own nature 
it is not capable of. 

To which I reply, any one's not being able to demonstrate the soul to be imma- 
terial takes off not very much, nor at all, from the evidence of its immortality, 
if God has revealed that it shall be immortal: because the veracity of God is a 
demonstration of the truth of what he has revealed, and the want of another de- 
monstration of a proposition, that is demonstratively true, takes not off from the 
evidence of it. For where there is a clear demonstration, there is as much evi- 

* 2d Answer. f 1st Answer. 



Ch. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 359 

immateriality; since it is evident, that he who made us at the beginning to 
subsist here, sensible intelligent beings, and for several years continued us in 
such a state, can and will restore us to the like state of sensibility in another 
world, and make us capable there to receive the retribution he has designed 

dence as any truth can have, that is not self-evident. God has revealed that the 
souls of men should live for ever. But, says your lordship, from this evidence it 
takes off very much, if it depends wholly upon God's giving that which of its own 
nature it is not capable of, i. e. The revelation and testimony of God loses much 
of its evidence, if this depends wholly upon the good pleasure of God, and cannos 
be demonstratively made out by natural reason, that the soul is immaterial, and 
consequently in its own nature immortal. For that is all that here is or can be 
meant by these words, ' which of its own nature it is not capable of,' to make the in 
to the purpose. For the whole of your lordship's discourse here is to prove, 
that the soul cannot be material, because then the evidence of its being immortal 
would be very much lessened. Which is to say, that it is not as credible upon 
divine revelation, that a material substance should be immortal, as an immaterial; 
or, which is all one, that God is not equally to be believed, when he declares, that 
a material substance shall be immortal, as when he declares, that an immaterial 
shall be so? because the immortality of a material substance cannot be demonstrated 
from natural reason. 

Let us try this rule of your lordship's a little further. God hath revealed, thai 
the bodies men shall have after the resurrection, as well as their souls, shall live 
to eternity. Does your lordship believe the eternal life of the one of these more 
than of the other, because you think you can prove it of one of them by natural 
reason, and of the other not? Or can any one, who admits of divine revelation in 
the case, doubt of one of them more than the other? or think this proposition less 
credible, that the bodies of men, after the resurrection, shall live for ever? than 
this, that the souls of men shall, after the insurrection, live for ever? For that 
he must do, if he thinks either of them is less credible than the other. If this 
be so, reason is to be consulted how far God is to be believed, and the credit of 
divine testimony must receive its force from the evidence of reason? which is evi- 
dently to take away the credibility of divine revelation in all supernatural truths, 
wherein the evidence of reason fails. And how much such a principle as this 
tends to the support of the doctrine of the Trinity, or the promoting of the Chris- 
tian religion, I shall leave it to your lordship to consider. 

I am not so well read in Hobbes or Spinosa as to be able to say, what were 
their opinions in this matter. But possibly there be those, who will think your 
lordship's authority of more use to them in the case, than those justly decried 
names; and be glad to find your lordship a patron of the oracles of reason, so little 
to the advantage of the oracles of divine revelation. This, at least, I think, may 
be subjoined to the words at the bottom of the next page*, that those who have 
gone about to lessen the credibility of the articles of faith, which evidently they 
do, who say they are less credible, because they cannot be made out demonstra- 
tively by natural reason, have not been thought to secure several of the articles of 
the Christian faith, especially those of the Trinity, incarnation, and resurrection of 
the body,which are those upon the account of which I am brought by your lordship 
into this dispute. 

I shall not trouble the reader with your lordship's endeavours, in the following 
words, to prove, that if the soul be not an immaterial substance, it ean be nothing 
but life; your very first words visibly confuting all that you allege to that purpo-e 
they aref, If the soul be a material substance, it is really nothing but life; which 
is to say, that if the soul be really a substance, it is not really a substance, but 
really nothing else but an affection of a substance; for the life, whether of a mate- 
rial or immaterial substance, is not the substance itself, but an affection of it. 

2. You say|, Although we think the separate state of the soul after death is 
sufficiently revealed in the Scripture; yet it creates a great difficulty in understai d 
ing it, if the soul be nothing but life, or a material substance, which must be dis 
solved when life is ended. For, if the soul be a material substance, it must b<- 

* 1st Answer. f Ibid. $ Ibid. 



360 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

to men, according to their doings in this life. And therefore it is not of such 
mighty necessity to determine one way or the other, as some, over zealous for 
or against the immateriality of the soul, have been forward to make the world 
believe. Who, either on the one side, indulging too much their thoughts im- 

made up, as others are, of the cohesion of solid and separate parts, how minute 
and invisible soever they be. And what is it which should keep them together, 
when life is gone? So that it is no easy matter to give an account how the soul 
should be capable of immortality, unless it be an immaterial substance; and then 
we know the solution and texture of bodies cannot reach the soul, being of a dif- 
ferent nature. 

Let it be as hard a matter as it will, to give an account what it is that should 
keep the parts of a material soul together, after it is separated from the body; yet 
it will be always as easy to give an account of it, as to give an account what it is 
which shall keep togetbera material and immaterial substance. And yet the diffi- 
culty that there is to give an account of that, I hope does not, with your lordship, 
weaken the credibility of the inseparable union of soul and body to eternity: and I 
persuade myself, that the men of sense, to whom your lordship appeals in the case, 
do not find their belief of this fundamental point much weakened by that difficulty. 
I thought heretofore (and by your lordship's permission would think so still) that 
the union of the parts of matter, one with another, is as much in the hands of 
God, as the union of a material and immaterial substance; and that it does not take 
off" very much, or at all, from the evidence of immortality, which depends on that 
union, that it is no easy matter to give an account what it is that should keep them 
together: though its depending wholly upon the gift and good pleasure of God, where 
the manner creates great difficulty in the understanding, and our reason cannot 
discover in the nature of things how it is, be that which your lordship so positively 
says, lessens the credibility of the fundamental articles of the resurrection and 
immortality. 

But, my lord, to remove this objection a little, and to show of how small a force 
it is even with yourself; give me leave to presume, that your lordship as firmly 
believes the immortality of the body after the resurrection, as any other article of 
faith; if so, then it being no easy matter to give an account what it is that shall 
keep together the parts of a material soul, to one that believes it is material, can 
no more weaken the credibility of its immortality, than the like difficulty weakens 
the credibility of the immortality of the body. For, when your lordship shall find 
it an easy matter to give an account what it is, besides the good pleasure of God, 
which shall keep together the parts of our material bodies to eternity, or even soul 
and body, I doubt not but any one, who shall think the soul material, will also find 
it as easy to give an account what it is that shall keep those parts of matter also 
together to eternity. 

Were it not that the warmth of controversy is apt to make men so far forget, as 
to take up those principles themselves (when they will serve their turn) which 
they have highly condemned in others, I should wonder to find your lordship to 
argue, that because it is a difficulty to understand what shall keep together the 
minute parts of a material soul, when life is gone ; and because it is not an easy 
mutter to give an account how the soul should be capable of immortality, unless it 
i>e an immaterial substance ; therefore it is not so credible, as if it were easy to give 
an account, by natural reason, how it could be. For to this it is that all this your 
discourse tends, as is evident by what is already set down ; and will be more fully 
made out by what your lordship says in other places, though there needs no such 
proof, since it would all be nothing against me in any other sense. 

1 thought your lordship had in other places asserted, and insisted on this truth, 
that no part of divine revelation was the less to be believed, because the thing it- 
self created great difficulty in the understanding, and the manner of it was hard to 
be explained, and it was no easy matter to give an account how it was. This, as I 
hike it, your lordship condemned in others as a very unreasonable principle, and 
such as would subvert all the articles of the Christian religion, that were mer<j 
mutters of faith, as I think it will : and is it possible that you should make use of 
il here yourself, against the article of life and immortality, that Christ hath brought 
to light through the gospel, and neither was nor could be made out by natural rea- 



Ch. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 361 

mersed altogether in matter, can allow no existence to what is not material : 
or who, on the other side, finding' not cogitation within the natural powers of 
matter, examined over and over again by the utmost intention of mind, have 
the confidence to conclude, that Omnipotency itself cannot give perception 

son without revelation? But you will say, you speak only of the soul $ and your 
words are, That it is no easy matter to give an account how the soul should be 
capable of immortality, unless it be an immaterial substance. I grant it ; but crave 
leave to say, that there is not any one of those difficulties, that are or can be raised 
about the manner how a material soul can be immortal, which do not as well reach 
the immortality of the body. 

But, if it were not so, I am sure this principle of your lordship's would reach 
other articles of faith, wherein our natural reason finds it not so easy to give an ac- 
count how those mysteries are ^ and which, therefore, according to your principles, 
must be less credible than other articles, that create less difficulty to the under- 
standing. For your lordship says,* that you appeal to any man of sense whether a 
man who thought by his principles he could from natural grounds demonstrate the 
immortality of the soul, the finding the uncertainty of those principles he went upon 
in point of reason, i. e. the finding he could not certainly prove it by natural reason, 
doth not weaken the credibility of that fundamental article, when it is considered 
purely as a matter of faith ? which, in effect, I humbly conceive, amounts to this, 
that a proposition divinely revealed, that cannot be proved by natural reason, is less 
credible than one that can: which seems to me to come very little short of this, 
with due reverence be it spoken, that God is less to be believed when he affirms a 
proposition that cannot be proved by natural reason, than when he proposes what 
can be proved by it. The direct contrary to which is my opinion, though you en- 
deavour to make it good by these following words :t If the evidence of faith falls 
so much short of that of reason, it must needs have less effect upon men's minds, 
when the subserviency of reason is taken away : as it must be when the grounds of 
certainty by reason are vanished. Is it at all probable, that he who finds his reason 
deceive him in such fundamental points, should have his faith stand firm and un- 
movable on the account of revelation ? Than which I think there are hardly 
plainer words to be found out to declare, that the credibility of God's testimony de- 
pends on the natural evidence or probability of the things we receive from revela- 
tion, and rises and falls with it, and that the truths of God, or the articles of mere 
faith, lose so much of their credibility, as they want proof from reason : which, if 
true, revelation may come to have no credibility at all. For if, in this present case, 
the credibility of this proposition, the souls of men shall live for ever, revealed in 
the Scripture, be lessened by confessing it cannot be demonstratively proved from 
reason ; though it be asserted to be most highly probable : must not, by the same 
rule, its credibility dwindle away to nothing, if natural reason should not be able to 
make it out to be so much as probable, or should place the probability from natural 
principles on the other side ? For, if mere want of demonstration lessens the 
credibility of any proposition divinely revealed, must not want of probability, or 
contrary probability from natural reason, quite take away its credibility ? Here at 
last it must end, if in any one case the veracity of God, and the credibility of the 
truths we receive from him by revelation, be subjected to the verdicts of human 
reason, and be allowed to receive any accession or diminution from other proofs, 
or want of other proofs, of its certainty or probability. 

If this be your lordship's way to promote religion, or defend its articles, I know 
not what argument the greatest enemies of it could use more effectual for the sub- 
version of those you have undertaken to defend ; this being to resolve all revelation 
perfectly and purely into natural reason, to bound its credibility by that, and leave 
no room for faith in other things, than what can be accounted for by natural reason 
without revelation. 

Your lordship^ insists much upon it, as if I had contradicted what I have said in 
my essay, by saying§ that upon my principles it cannot be demonstratively proved, 
that it is an immaterial substance in us that thinks, however probable it be. He 
that will be at the pains to read that chapter of mine, and consider it, will find 

* 2d Answer. f Ibid. J 1st Answer. § Book 2. ch. 23. 

2V 



362 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

and thought to a substance which has the modification of solidity. He that 
considers how hardly sensation is, in our thoughts, reconcileable to extended 
matter ; or existence to any thing that hath no extension at all ; will confess 
that he is very far from certainly knowing what his soul is. It is a point which 

that my business was tbere to show, that it was no harder to conceive an immaterial 
than a material substance ; and that from the ideas of thought, and a power of moving 
of matter, which we experienced in ourselves (ideas originally not belonging to the 
matter as matter), there was no more difficulty to conclude there was an immaterial 
substance in us, than that we had material parts. These ideas of thinking, and power 
of moving of matter, I in another place showed, did demonstratively lead us to the 
certain knowledge of the existence of an immaterial thinking being, in whom we have 
the idea of spirit in the strictest sense ; in which sense 1 also applied it to the soul, 
in the 23d ch. of my essay ; the easily conceivable possibility, nay, great probability, 
that the thinking substance in us is immaterial, giving me sufficient ground for it : 
in which sense I shall think I may safely attribute it to the thinking substance in us, 
till your lordship shall have better proved from my words, that it is impossible it 
should be immaterial. For I only say, that it is possible, i. e. involves no con- 
tradiction, that God, the omnipotent immaterial spirit, should, if he pleases, give 
to some parcels of matter, disposed as he thinks fit, a power of thinking and mov- 
ing; which parcels of matter, so endued with a power of thinking and motion, 
might properly be called spirits, in contradistinction to unthinking matter. In all 
which, I presume, there is no manner of contradiction. 

I justified my use of the word spirit, in that sense, from the authorities of Cicero 
and Virgil, applying the Latin word spiritus, from whence spirit is derived, to the 
soul as a thinking thing, without excluding materiality out of it. To which your 
lordship replies,* That Cicero, in his Tusculan Questions, supposes the soul not 

to be a finer sort of body, but of a different nature from the body That he calls 

the body the prison of the soul —and says, that a wise man's business is to draw 

off his soul from his body. And then your lordship concludes, as is usual, with a 
question, Is it possible now to think so great a man looked on the soul but as a mo- 
dification of the body, which must be at an end with life. Ans. No ; it is impossible 
that a man of so good sense as Tully, when he uses the word corpus or body for 
the gross and visible parts of a man, which he acknowledges to be mortal, should 
look on the soul to be a modification of that body, in a discourse wherein he was 
endeavouring to persuade another that it was immortal. It is to be acknowledged 
that truly great men, such as he was, are not wont so manifestly to contradict them- 
selves. He had therefore no thought concerning the modification of the body of a 
man in the case : he was not such a trifleras to examine, whether the modification 
of the body of a man was immortal, when that body itself was mortal : and there- 
fore, that which he reports as Dic«archus's opinion, he dismisses in the beginning 
without any more ado, c. 11. But Cicero's was a direct, plain, and sensible in- 
quiry, viz. What the soul was ? to see whether from thence he could discover its 
immortality. But in all that discourse in his first book of Tusculan Questions, 
where he lays out so much of his reading and reason, there is not one syllable 
showing the least thought that the soul was an immaterial substance ; but many 
things directly to the contrary. 

Indeed, 1. He shuts out the body, taken in the sense he uses corpus all along., 7 
for the sensible organical parts of a man ; and is positive that is not the soul : and 
body in this sense, taken for the human body, he calls the prison of the soul : and 
says a wise man, instancing in Socrates and Cato, is glad of a fair opportunity to 
get out of it. But he nowhere says any such thing of matter : he calls not matter 
in general the prison of the soul, nor talks a word of being separate from it. 

2. He concludes that the soul is not, like other things here below, made up of a 
composition of the elements, c. 27. 

3. He excludes the two gross elements, earth and water, from being the soul, c. 26 . 
So far he is clear and positive : but beyond this he is uncertain ; beyond this he 

eould not get ; for in some places he speaks doubtfully, whether the soul be not air 
or fire. Anima sit animus, ignisve, nescio, c. 25. And therefore he agrees with 
Pansetius, that if it be at all elementary, it is, as he calls it, inflammata anima, in- 

* 1st Ansver, f Ch. 19, 22, 30, 31, &c. 



Ch. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 363 

seems to me to be put out of the reach of our knowledge : and he who will 
give himself leave to consider freely, and look into the dark and intricate part 
of each hypothesis, will scarce find his reason able to determine him fixedly 
for or against the soul's materiality. Since on which side soever he views 

flamed air ; and for this he gives several reasons, c. 18, 19. And though he thinks 
it to be of a peculiar nature of its own, yet he is so far from thinking it immaterial, 
that he says, c. 19, that the admitting it to be of an aerial or igneous nature will not 
be inconsistent with any thing he had said. 

That which he seems most to incline to is, that the soul was not at all elementary, 
but was of the same substance with the heavens ; which Aristotle, to distinguish 
from the four elements, and the changeable bodies here below, which he supposed 
made up of them, called quinta essentia. That this was Tully's opinion is plain 
from these words, Ergo animus (qui, ut ego dico, divinus) est, ut Euripides audet 
dicere, Deus ; et quidem, si Deus aut anima aut ignis est, idem est animus hominis. 
Nam ut ilia natura crelestis et terra vacat et humore ; sic utriusque harum rerum 
humanus animus est expers. Sin autem est quinta qusedam natura ab Aristotele 
inducta ; primum hsec et decorum est et animorum. Hanc nos sententiam secuti, 
his ipsis verbis in consolatione hsec expressimus, ch. 29. And then he goes on, c. 27. 
to repeat those his own words, which your lordship has quoted out of him, where- 
in he had affirmed, in his treatise De Consolatione, the soul not to have its original 
from the earth, or to be mixed or made of any thing earthly ; but had said singularis 
est igitur qusedam natura et vis animi, sejuncta ab his usitatis notisque naturis : 
whereby he tells us, he meant nothing but Aristotle's quinta essentia : which being 
unmixed, being that of which the gods and souls consisted, he calls it divinum 
coeleste, and concludes it eternal ; it being, as he speaks, sejuncta ab omni mortali 
concretione. From which it is clear, that in all his inquiry about the substance of 
the soul, his thoughts went not beyond the four elements, or Aristotle's quinta es- 
sentia, to look for it. In all which there is nothing of immateriality, but quite the 
contrary. 

He was willing to believe (as good and wise men have always been) that the soul 
was immortal ; but for that, it is plain, he never thought of its immateriality but as 
the eastern people do, who believe the soul to be immortal, but have nevertheless 
no thought, no conception of its immateriality. It is remarkable what a very con- 
siderable and judicious author says in the case.* No opinion, says he, has been so 
universally received as that of the immortality of the soul ; but its immateriality is 
a truth, the knowledge whereof has not spread so far. And indeed it is extremely 
difficult to let into the mind of a" Siamite the idea of a pure spirit. This the mis- 
sionaries who have been longest among them are positive in. All the pagans of the 
east do truly believe, that there remains something of a man after his death, which 
subsists independently and separately from his body. But they give extension and 
figure to that which remains, and attribute to it all the same members, all the same 
substances, both solid and liquid, which our bodies are composed of. They only 
suppose that the souls are of a matter subtile enough to escape being seen or hand- 
led. Such were the shades and manes of the Greeks and the Romans. And it is by 
these figures of the souls, answerable to those of the bodies, that Virgil supposed 
.Eneas knew Palinurus, Dido, and Anchises, in the other world. 

This gentleman was not a man that travelled into those parts for his pleasure, 
and to have the opportunity to tell strange stories, collected by chance, when he 
returned: but one chosen on purpose (and he seems well chosen for the purpose) 
to inquire into the singularities of Siam. And he has so well acquitted himself of 
the commission, which his epistle dedicatory tells us he had, to inform himself 
exactly of what was most remarkable there, that had we but such an account of 
other countries of the east as he has given us of this kingdom, which he was an envoy 
to, we should be much better acquainted than we are with the manners, notions, 
and religions of that part of the world inhabited by civilized nations, who want 
neither good sense nor acuteness of reason, though not cast into the mould of the 
logic and philosophy of our schools. 

But, to return to Cicero: it is plain, that in his inquiries about the soul, his 

*Loubere du Royaume de Siam, T. 1. c. 19, § 4. 



364 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4 

it, either as an unextended substance, or as a thinking extended matter ; the 
difficulty to conceal either will, whilst either alone is in his thoughts, stilJ 
drive him to the contrary side ; an unfair way which some men take with 
themselves, who, because of the inconceivableness of something they find in 

thoughts went not at all beyond matter. This, the expressions that drop from him 
in several places of this book evidently show. For example, that the souls of 
excellent men and women ascended into heaven? of others, that they remained 
here on earth, c. 12. That the soul is hot, and warms the body: that, at its leav- 
ing the body, it penetrates, and divides, and breaks through our thick, cloud}', 
moist air: that it stops in the region of fire, and ascends no farther; the equality 
of warmth and weight making that its proper place, where it is nourished and 
sustained, with the same things wherewith the stars are nourished and sustained: 
and that by the convenience of its neighbourhood, it shall there have a clearer 
view and fuller knowledge of the heavenly bodies, c. 19. That the soul also from 
this height shall have a pleasant and fairer prospect of the globe of the earth, the 
disposition of whose parts will then lie before it in one view, c. 20. That it is 
hard to determine what conformation, size, and place, the soul has in the body: 
that it is too subtile to be seen: that it is in the human body as in a house, or a 
vessel, or a receptacle, c. 22. All which are expressions that sufficiently evidence 
that he who used them had not in his mind separated materiality from the idea of 
the soul. 

It may perhaps be replied, that a great part of this which we find in chap. 19, 
is said upon the same principles of those who would have the soul to be anima in- 
fiammata, inflamed air. I grant it. But it is also to be observed, that in this 19th, 
and the two following chapters, he does not only not deny, but even admits, that 
so material a thing as inflamed air may think. 

The truth of the case in short is this: Cicero was willing to believe the soul im- 
mortal; but when he sought in the nature of the soul itself something to establish 
this his belief in a certainty of it, he found himself at a loss. He confessed ht 
knew not what the soul was; but the not knowing what it was, he argues, c. 22, 
was no reason to conclude it was not. And thereupon he proceeds to the repeti- 
tion of what he had said in his 6th book, De Repub. concerning the soul. The ar 
gument, which, borrowed from Plato, he there makes use of, if it have any force in 
it, not only proves the soul to be immortal, but more than, I think, your lordship 
will allow to be true; for it proves it to be eternal and without beginning, as well 
as without end: Neque nata certe est, et seterna est, says he. 

Indeed, from the faculties of the soul he concludes right, that it is of divine 
original: but as to the substance of the soul, he at the end of this discourse con- 
cerning its faculties, c. 25, as well as at this beginning of it, c. 22, is not ashamed 
to own his ignorance of what it is; Anima sit animus, ignisve, nescio ; nee me 
pudet, ut istos, fateri nescire quod nesciam. Ulud si ulla alia de re obscura 
affirmare possem, sive anima, sive ignis sit animus, eum jurarem esse divinum, c. 
25. So that all the certainty he could attain to about the soul was that he was 
confident there was something divine in it, i. e. there were faculties in the soul that 
could not result from the nature of matter, but must have their original from a 
divine power; but yet those qualities, as divine as they were, he acknowledged 
might be placed in breath or fire, which, I think, your lordship will not deny to be 
material substances- So that all those divine qualities , which he so much and 
so justly extols in the soul, led- him not, as appears, so much as to any the least 
thought of immateriality. This is demonstration, that he built them not upon an 
exclusion of materiality out of the soul; for he avowedly professes he does not 
know but breath or fire might be this thinking thing in us: and in all his considera- 
tions about the substance of the soul itself, he stuck in air or fire, or Aristotle's 
quinta essentia; for beyond those it is evident he went not. 

But with all his proofs out of Plato, to whose authority he defers so much, 
with all the arguments his vast reading and great parts could furnish him with for 
the immortality of the soul, he was so little satisfied, so far from being certain, so 
far from any thought that he had, or could prove it, that he over and over again 
professes his ignorance and doubt of it. In the beginning he enumerates the several 
opinions of the philosophers, which he had well studied, about it: and then, full of 



Ch. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 355 

one, throw themselves violently into the contrary hypothesis, though alto- 
gether as unintelligible to an unbiassed understanding. This serves not only to 
show the weakness and the scantiness of our knowledge, but the insignificant 
triumph of such sort of arguments, which, drawn from our own views, may 

uncertainty, says Harum sententiarum quae vera sit, Deus aliquis viderit; qu:e 
verisimillima, magna qusestio, c. II. And towards the latter end, having gone them 
all over again, and one after another examined them, he professes himself still at a 
loss, not knowing on which to pitch, nor what to determine. Mentis acies, says 
he, seipsam, intuens, nonnunquam hebescit, oh emaque causam contemplandi dili- 
gentiam amittimus. Itaque dubitans, circumspectans, hsesitans, mulla adversa re- 
vertens, tanquam in rate in mari immenso, nostra vehitur oratio, c. 30. And to 
conclude this argument, when the person he introduces as discoursing with him 
tells him he is resolved to keep firm to the belief of immortality; Tully answers, 
c. 32, Laudo id quidem, et si nihil animis oportet considere: movemur enim ssepe 
aliquo acute concluso; labamus, mutamusque sententiam clarioribus etiam in re- 
bus; in his est enim aliqua obscuritas. 

So immovable is that truth delivered by the spirit of truth, that though the light 
of nature gave some obscure glimmering, some uncertain hopes of a future state; yet 
human reason could attain to no clearness, no certainty about it, but that it was 
Jesus Christ alone who had brought life and immortality to light through the 
gospel*. Though we are now told, that to own the inability of natural reason, 
to bring immortality to light, or, which passes for the same, to own principles 
upon which the immateriality of the soul (and, as it is urged, consequently its 
immortality) cannot be demonstratively proved, does lessen the belief of this 
article of revelation, which Jesus Christ alone has brought to light, and 
whieh consequently the Scripture assures us is established and made certain only 
by revelation. This would not perhaps have seemed strange, from those who are 
justly complained of for slighting the revelation of the gospel, and therefore would 
not be much regarded, if they should contradict so plain a text of Scripture, in 
favour of their all sufficient reason: but what use the promoters of scepticism and 
infidelity, in an age so much respected by your lordship, may make of what comes 
from one of your great authority and learning, may deserve your consideration. 

And thus, my lord, I hope, I have satisfied you concerning Cicero's opinion about 
the soul, in his first book of Tusculan Questions: which, though I easily believe, 
as your lordship says, you are no stranger to, yet I humbly conceive you have not 
shown (and, upon a careful perusal of that treatise again, I think I may boldy say 
you cannot show) one word in it, that expresses any thing like a notion in Tully of 
the soul's immateriality, or its being an immaterial substance. 

From what you bring out of Virgil, your lordship concludes!, that he, no more 
than Cicero, does me any kindness in this matter, being both asserters of the soul's 
immortality. My lord, were not the question of the soul's immateriality, according 
to custom, changed here into that of its immortality, which I am no less an asser- 
torof than either of them, Cicero and Virgil do me all the kindness I desired ot 
them in this matter: and that was to show, that they attributed the word spiritus 
to the soul of man without any thought of its immateriality; and this the verses you 
yourself bring out of Virgil:):, 

Et cum frigida mors anima seduxerit artus, 
Omnibus umbra locis adero, dabis, improbe, poenas; 

confirm, as well as those I quoted out of his 6th book; and for this, Monsieur de 
la Loubere shall be my witness in the words above set down out of him; where 
he shows that there be those among the heathens of our days, as well as Virgil and 
others among the ancient Greeks and Romans, who thought the souls or ghosts of 
men departed did not die with the body, without thinking them to be perfectly 
immaterial ; the latter being much more incomprehensible to them than the 
former. And what Virgil's notion of the soul is, and that corpus, when put in 
contradistinction to the soul, signifies nothing but the gross tenement of flesh ani. 

* Tim. i. 10. t 1st Answer, $ jEneid, vi. 385. 



366 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

satisfy us that we can find no certainty on one side of the question ; but do 
not at all thereby help us to truth by running into the opposite opinion, which, 
on examination, will be found clogged with equal difficulties. For wnut 
safety, what advantage to any one is it, for the avoiding the seeming absur- 

bones, is eviderit from this verse of his iEneid, vi. where he calls the souls which 
yet were visible, 

Tenues sine corpore vitas. 

Your lordship's* answer concerning what is said in Eccles. xii. turns wholly 
upon Solomon's taking the soul to be immortal, which was not what I questioned: 
nil that I quoted that place for, was to show, that spirit in English might properly 
be applied to the soul, without any notion of its immateriality, as HH was by 
Solomon, which, whether he thought the souls of men to be immaterial, does little 
appear in that passage, where he speaks of the souls of men and beasts together, 
ms he does. But farther, what I contended for is evident from that place, in that 
the word spirit is there applied by our translators to the souls of beasts, which 
your lordship, I think, does not rank among the immaterial, and consequently im- 
mortal spirits, though they have sense and spontaneous motion. 

But you sayf, if the soul be not of itself a free thinking substance, you do not 
see what foundation there is in nature for a day of judgment. Answer, Though 
she heathen world did not of old, nor do to this day, see a foundation in nature for 
a day of judgment; yet in revelation, if that will satisfy your lordship, every one 
may see a foundation for a day of judgment, because God has positively declared 
it; though God has not by that revelation taught us what the substance of the 
soul is; nor has any where said, that the soul of itself is a free agent. Whatso- 
ever any created substance is, it is not of itself, but is by the good pleasure of its 
Creator: whatever degrees of perfection it has, ithas from the bountiful hand of its 
Maker. For it is true in a natural, as well as a spiritual sense, what St Paul says:):, 
Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing, as of ourselves, but our 
sufficiency is of God. 

But your lordship, as I guess by your following words, would argue, that a 
material substance cannot be a free agent: whereby 1 suppose you only mean, 
that you cannot see or conceive how a solid substance should begin, stop, or 
change its own motion. To which, give me leave to answer, that when you 
can make it conceivable, how any created, finite, dependent substance can move 
itself, or alter or stop its own motion, which it must to be a free agent; I suppose 
you will find it no harder for God to bestow this power on a solid than an unsolid 
created substance. Tully, in the place above quoted§, could not conceive this 
power to be in any thing but what was from eternity; Cum pateat igitur seter- 
num id esse quod seipsum moveat, qui s est qui hanc naturam animis esse tributam 
neget? But though you cannot see how any created substance, solid or not solid, 
can be a free agent, (pardon me, my lord, if I put in both, till your lordship please 
to explain it of either, and show the manner how either of them can, of itself, 
move itself or any thing else) yet I do not think you will so far deny men to be free 
agents, from the difficulty there is to see how they are free agents, as to doubt whe- 
ther there be foundation enough for a day of judgment. 

It is not for me to judge how far your lordship's speculations reach: but finding 
in myself nothing to be truer than what wise Solomon tells me||, As thou knowest 
not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of 
her that is with child; even so thou knowest not the works of God, who maketh 
:ili things; I gratefully receive and rejoice in the light of revelation, which sets 
me at rest in many things, the manner whereof my poor reason can by no means 
make out to me: Omnipotency, I know, can do any thing that contains in it no 
contradiction : so that 1 readily believe whatever God has declared, though my 
reason find difficulties in it which it cannot master. As in the present case, God 
having revealed that there shall be a day of judgment, I think that foundation 
enough to conclude men are free enough to be made answerable for their actions, 

* 1st Answer. f Ibid. $ 2 Cor. iii. 5. 

§ Tusculan Qusest. 1. 1. c. 23. || Eccles. xi. 5. 



Ch. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 36? 

dities, and to him insurmountable rubs he meets with in one opinion, to take 
refuge in the contrary, which is built on something altogether as inexplicable, 
and as far remote from his comprehension 7 It is past controversy, that we 
have in us something that thinks ; our very doubts about what it is, confirm 
the certainty of its being, though we must content ourselves in the ignorance 
of what kind of being it is : and it is in vain to go about to be sceptical in 
(his, as it is unreasonable in most other cases to be positive against the being 
of any thing, because we cannot comprehend its nature. For I would fain 
know what substance exists, that has not something in it which manifestly 
baffles our understandings. Other spirits, who see and know the nature and 
inward constitution of things, how much must they exceed us in knowledge? 
To which if we add larger comprehension, which enables them at one glance 
to see the connexion and agreement of very many ideas, and readily supplies 
to them the intermediate proofs, which we, by single and slow steps, and 
long poring in the dark, hardly at last find out, and are often ready to forget 
one before we have hunted out another ; we may guess at some part of the 
happiness of superior ranks of spirits, who have a quicker and more penetrat- 
ing sight, as well as a larger field of knowledge. But to return to the argu- 
ment in hand ; our knowledge, I say, is not only limited to the paucity and 
:smperfections of the ideas we have, and which we employ it about, but even 
comes short of that too. But how far it reaches, let us now inquire. 

Sect. 7. How far our knowledge reaches. — The affirmations or negations 
we make concerning the ideas we have, may, as I have before intimated in 
general, be reduced to these four sorts, viz. identity, coexistence, relation, 
and real existence. I shall examine how far our knowledge extends in each 
of these. 

Sect. 8. 1. Our knowledge of identity and diversity, as far as our ideas. 
— First, as to identity and diversity, in this way of the agreement or disagree- 
ment of our ideas, our intuitive knowledge is as far extended as our ideas 
themselves : and there can be no idea in the mind, which it does not pre- 
sently, by an intuitive knowledge, perceive to be what it is, and to be differ- 
ent from any other. 

Sect. 9. 2. Of coexistence, a very little way. — Secondly, as to the second 
sort, which is the agreement or disagreement of our ideas in coexistence; in 
this our knowledge is very short, though in this consists the greatest and 
most material part of our knowledge concerning substances. For our ideas 
of the species of substances being, as I have shown, nothing but certain col- 

and to receive according to what they have done; though how man is a free agent, 
surpasses ray explication or comprehension. 

In answer to the place I brought out of St Luke,* your lordship asks,f 
Whether from these words of our Saviour it follows, that a spirit is only an ap- 
pearance? I answer, No; nor do I know who drew such an inference from them: 
but it follows, that in apparitions there is something that appears, and that which 
appears is not wholly immaterial; and yet this was properly called 7rvrj/un, and 
was often looked upon by those who called it •7rviuf/.ct in Greek, and now call it spi- 
rit in English, to he the ghost or soul of one departed; which I humbly conceive 
justifies my use of the word spirit, for a thinking voluntary agent, whether mate- 
rial or immaterial. 

Your lordship says,:): that I grant, that it cannot upon these principles be de- 
monstrated, that the spiritual substance in us is immaterial: from whence you con- 
clude, that then my grounds of certainty from ideas are plainly given up. This 
being a way of arguing which you often make use of, I have often had occasion to 
consider it, and cannot after all see the force of this argument. I acknowledge 
that this or that proposition cannot upon my principles be demonstrated; ergo, I 
grant this proposition to be false, that certainty consists in the perception of the 
agreement or disagreement of ideas. For that is my ground of certainty, and til' 
that be given up, my grounds of certainty are not given up. 

* Ch. xxiv. v. 32. f 1st Answer $ Ibid. 



368 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

lections of simple ideas united in one subject, and so coexisting together ; 
v. g. our idea of flame is a body hot, luminous, and moving upward ; of gold, 
a body heavy to a certain degree, yellow, malleable, and fusible : these, or 
some such complex ideas as these in men's minds, do those two names of the 
different substances, flame and gold, stand for. When we would know any 
thing farther concerning these, or any other sort of substances, what do we in- 
quire, but what other qualities or powers these substances have or have not ? 
Which is nothing else but to know what other simple ideas do or do not 
coexist with those that make up that complex idea. 

Sect. 10. Because the connexion between most simple ideas is unknown. 
—This, how weighty and considerable a part soever of human science, is yet 
very narrow, and scarce any at all. The reason whereof is, that the simple 
ideas, whereof our complex ideas of substances are made up, are, for the most 
part, such as carry with them, in their own nature, no visible necessary con- 
nexion or inconsistency with any other simple ideas, whose coexistence with 
them we would inform ourselves about. 

Sect. 11. Especially of secondary qualities. — The ideas that our complex 
ones of substances are made up of, and about which our knowledge concern- 
ing substances is most employed, are those of their secondary qualities ; 
which depending all (as has been shown) upon the primary qualities of their 
minute and insensible parts, — or if not upon them, upon something yet more 
remote from our comprehension, — it is impossible we should know which 
have a necessary union or inconsistency one with another: for not knowing- 
the root they spring from, not knowing what size, figure, and texture of parts 
they are, on which depend, and from which result, those qualities which make 
our complex idea of gold ; it is impossible we should know what other quali- 
ties result from, or are incompatible with, the same constitution of the insen- 
sible parts of gold, and so consequently must always coexist with that com- 
plex idea we have of it, or else are inconsistent with it. 

Sect. 12. Because all connexion between any secondary and primary 
qualities is undiscoverable. — Besides this ignorance of the primary qualities 
of the insensible parts of bodies, on which depend all their secondary quali- 
ties, there is yet another and more incurable part of ignorance, which sets 
us more remote from a certain knowledge of the coexistence or incoexistence 
(if I may so say) of different ideas in the same subject ; and that is, that 
there is no discoverable connexion between any secondary quality and those 
primary qualities which it depends on. 

Sect. 13. That the size, figure, and motion of one body should cause a 
change in the size, figure, and motion of another body, is not beyond our 
conception : the separation of the parts of one body upon the intrusion of 
another, and the change from rest to motion upon impulse, — these and the 
like seem to us to have some connexion one with another. And if we knew 
these primary qualities of bodies, we might have reason to hope we might be 
able to know a great deal more of these operations of them one upon another : 
but our minds not being able to discover any connexion betwixt those primary 
qualities of bodies and the sensations that are produced in us by them, we can 
never be able to establish certain and undoubted rules of the consequences or 
coexistence of any secondary qualities, though we could discover the size, 
figure, or motion of those invisible parts which immediately produce them. 
We are so far from knowing what figure, size, or motion of parts produce a 
yellow colour, a sweet taste, or a sharp sound, that we can by no means con- 
ceive how any size, figure, or motion of any particles, can possibly produce 
in us the idea of any colour, taste, or sound whatsoever ; there is no con- 
ceivable connexion between the one and the other. 

Sect. 14. In vain, therefore, shall we endeavour to discover by our ideas 
(the only true way of certain and universal knowledge) what other ideas are 
to be found constantly joined with that of our complex idea of any substance: 
since we neither know the real constitution of the minute parts on which their 
qualities do depend, nor, did we know them, could we discover any neces- 



Ch. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGF. 369 

sary connexion between them and any of the secondary qualities : which is 
necessary to be done before we can certainly know their necessary coexis- 
tence. So that, let our complex idea of any species of substances be what it 
will, we can hardly, from the simple ideas contained in it, certainly detei 
mine the necessary coexistence of any other quality whatsoever. Our know- 
ledge in all these inquiries reaches very little farther than our experience. 
Indeed, some few of the primary qualities have a necessary dependence and 
visible connexion one with another, as figure necessarily supposes extension ; 
receiving or communicating motion by impulse, supposes solidity. But 
though these and perhaps some other of our ideas have, yet there are so few 
of them that have a visible connexion one with another, that we can by intu- 
ition or demonstration discover the coexistence of very few of the qualities that 
are to be found united in substances : and we are left only to the assistance 
of our senses, to make known to us what qualities they contain. For of all 
the qualities that are coexistent in any subject, without this dependence and 
evident connexion of their ideas one with another, we cannot know certainly 
any two to coexist any farther than experience, by our senses, informs us. 
Thus, though we see the yellow colour, and upon trial find the weight, mal- 
leableness, fusibility, and fixedness, that are united in a piece of gold ; yet 
because no one of these ideas has any evident dependence, or necessary con- 
nexion with the other, we cannot certainly know, that where any four of 
these are, the fifth will be there also, how highly probable soever it may be ; 
because the highest probability amounts not to certainty, without which there 
can be no true knowledge. For this coexistence can be no farther known 
than it is perceived ; and it cannot be perceived but either in particular sub- 
jects, by the observation of our senses, or in general, by the necessary con- 
nexion of the ideas themselves. 

Sect. 15. Of repugnancy to coexist, larger. — As to the incompatibility 
or repugnancy to coexistence ; we may know that any subject may have 
of each sort of primary qualities but one particular at once ; v. g. each par- 
ticular extension, figure, number of parts, motion, excludes all other of each 
kind. The like also is certain of all sensible ideas peculiar to each sense ; for 
whatever of each kind is present in any subject, excludes all other of that sort ; 
v. g. no one subject can have two smells or two colours at the same time. 
To this perhaps will be said, has not an opal, or the infusion of lignum ne- 
phriticum, two colours at the same time ] To which I answer, that these 
bodies, to eyes differently placed, may, at the same time, afford different co- 
lours ; but I take liberty also to say, that to eyes differently placed, it is dif- 
ferent parts of the object that reflect the particles of light ; and therefore it is 
not the same part of the object, and so not the very same subject, which at 
the same time appears both yellow and azure. For it is as impossible that 
the very same particle of any body should at the same time differently modifv 
or reflect the rays of light, as that it should have two different figures »r/d 
textures at the same time. 

Sect. 16. Of the coexistence of powers, a very little way. — But as to the 
powers of substances to change the sensible qualities of other bodies, which 
make a great part of our inquiries about them, and is no inconsiderable branch 
of our knowledge ; I doubt, as to these, whether our knowledge reaches much 
farther than our experience ; or whether we can come to the discovery of 
most of these powers, and be certain that they are in any subject, by the con- 
nexion of any of those ideas which to us make its essence. Because the ac- 
tive and passive powers of bodies, and their ways of operating, consisting in 
a texture and motion of parts, which we cannot by any means come to dis- 
cover ; it is but in very few cases we can be able to perceive their dependence 
on, or repugnance to, any of those ideas, which make our complex one of that 
sort of things. I have here instanced in the corpuscularian hypothesis, as 
that which is thought to go farthest in an intelligible explication of those 
qualities of bodies ; and I fear the weakness of human understanding is scarce 
able to substitute another, which will afford us a fuller and clearer discoverv 
2 W 



370 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

of the necessary connexion and coexistence of the powers which are to be 
observed united in several sorts of them. This at least is certain, that which- 
ever hypothesis be clearest and truest, (for of that it is not my business to de- 
termine) our knowledge concerning corporeal substances will be very little 
advanced by any of them, till we are made to see what qualities and powers 
of bodies have a necessary connexion and repugnancy one with another ; 
which in the present state of philosophy, I think we know but to a very small 
degree : and 1 doubt whether, with those faculties we have, we shall ever be 
abJe to carry our general knowledge (I say not particular experience) in 
this part much farther. Experience is that which in this part we must 
depend on. And it were to be wished that it were more improved. We 
find the advantages some men's generous pains have this way brought to the 
stock of natural knowledge. And if others, especially the philosophers by fire, 
who pretend to it, had been so wary in their observations, and sincere in their 
reports, as those who call themselves philosophers ought to have been, our 
acquaintance with the bodies here about us, and our insight into their powers 
and operations, had been yet much greater. 

Sect. 17. Of spirits, yet narrower. — If we are at a loss in respect of the 
powers and operations of bodies, I think it is easy to conclude, we are much 
more in the dark in reference to the spirits ; whereof we naturally have no 
ideas but what we draw from that of our own, by reflecting on the operations 
of our own souls within us, as far as they can come within our observation. 
But how inconsiderable a rank the spirits that inhabit our bodies hold among 
those various and possibly innumerable kinds of nobler beings ; and how far 
short they come of the endowments and perfections of cherubim and seraphim, 
and infinite sorts of spirits above us ; is what by a transient hint in another 
place, I have offered to my reader's consideration. 

Sect. 18. 3. Of other relations, it is not easy to say how far. — As to the 
third sort of our knowledge, viz. the agreement or disagreement of any of 
our ideas in any other relation : this, as it is the largest field of our know- 
ledge, so it is hard to determine how far it may extend ; because the ad- 
vances that are made in this part of knowledge, depending on our sagacity 
in finding intermediate ideas, that may show the relations and habitudes of 
ideas, whose coexistence is not considered, it is a hard matter to tell 
when we are at an end of such discoveries ; and when reason has all the 
helps it is capable of, for the finding of proofs, or examining the agreement 
or disagreement of remote ideas. They that are ignorant of algebra cannot 
imagine the wonders in this kind are to be done by it : and what farther im- 
provements and helps, advantageous to other parts of knowledge the saga- 
cious mind of man may yet find out, it is not easy to determine This at 
ease I believe, that the ideas of quantity are not those alone that are capa- 
ble of demonstration and knowledge ; and that other, and perhaps more useful 
t>srts of contemplation, would afford us certainty, if vices, passions, and dom- 
ineering interest did not oppose or menace such endeavours. 

Morality capable of demonstration. — The idea of a Supreme Being, infi- 
nite in power, goodness, and wisdom, whose workmanship we are, and on 
whom we depend ; and the i4§S cf ourselves, as understanding rational beings, 
being such as are clear in us, would, I suppose, if duly considered and pur- 
sued, afford such foundations of our duty and rules of action, as might place 
morality among the sciences capable of demonstration : wherein I doubt not 
but from self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences, as incontesti- 
hle as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made 
out to any one that will apply himself with the same indifferency and atten- 
tion to the one, as he does to the other of these sciences. The relation of 
other modes may certainly be perceived, as well as those of number and ex- 
tension ; and I cannot see why they should not also be capable of demonstra- 
tion, if due methods were thought on to examine or pursue their agreement 
or disagreement. Where there is no property, there is no injustice, is a pro- 
position as certain as any demonstration in Euclid: for the idea of property 
oemg a right to any thing ; and the idea to which the name injustice is given 



Ch. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 371 

being the invasion or violation of that right ; it is evident that these ideas 
being thus established, and these names annexed to them, I can as certainly 
know this proposition to be true, as that a triangle has three angles equal to 
two right ones. Again, " no government allows absolute liberty :" the idea 
of government being the establishment of society upon certain rules or laws 
which require conformity to them ; and the idea of absolute liberty being for 
any one to do whatever he pleases ; I am as capable of being certain of the 
truth of this proposition, as of any in the mathematics. 

Sect. 19. Two things have made moral ideas thought incapable of de- 
monstration : their complexedness, and want of sensible representations. — 
That which in this respect has given the advantage to the ideas of quantity, 
and made them thought more capable of certainty and demonstration, is, 

First, That they can be set down and represented by sensible marks, which 
have a greater and nearer correspondence with them than any words or 
sounds whatsoever. Diagrams drawn on paper are copies of the ideas in 
the mind, and not liable to the uncertainty that words carry in their significa- 
tion. An angle, circle, or square, drawn in lines, lies open to the view, and 
cannot be mistaken ; it remains unchangeable, and may at leisure be consid- 
ered and examined, and the demonstration be revised, and all the parts of it 
may be gone over more than once without any danger of the least change in 
the ideas. This cannot be thus done in moral ideas ; we have no sensible 
marks that resemble them, whereby we can set them down ; we have nothing 
but words to express them by : which though, when written, they remain 
the same, yet the ideas they stand for may change in the same man ; and it 
is very seldom that they are not different in different persons. 

Secondly, Another thing that makes the greater difficulty in ethics is, that 
moral ideas are commonly more complex than those of the figures ordinarily 
considered in mathematics. From whence these two inconveniences fol- 
low : first, that their names are of more uncertain signification, the precise 
collection of simple ideas they stand for not being so easily agreed on, and 
so the sign that is used for them in communication always, and in thinking 
often, does not steadily carry with it the same idea. Upon which the same 
disorder, confusion, and error follow, as would if a man, going to demon- 
strate something of an heptagon, should, in the diagram he took to do it, 
leave out one of the angles, or by oversight make the figure with one angle 
more than the name ordinarily imported, or he intended it should, when at 
first he thought of his demonstration. This often happens, and is hardly 
avoidable in very complex moral ideas, where the same name being retained, 
one angle, i. e. one simple idea is left out or put in the complex one (still 
called by the same name) more at one time than another. Secondly, from 
the complexedness of the moral ideas, there follows another inconvenience, 
viz. that the mind cannot easily retain those precise combinations, so exactly 
and perfectly as is necessary in the examination of the habitudes and corres- 
pondences, agreements or disagreements, of several of them one with an 
other ; especially where it is to be judged of by long productions, and the 
intervention of several other complex ideas, to show the agreement or dis- 
agreement of two remote ones. 

The great help against this which mathematicians find in diagrams and 
figures, which remain unalterable in their draughts, is very apparent, and the 
memory would often have great difficulty otherwise to retain them so exactly, 
whilst the mind went over the parts of them, step by step, to examine their 
several correspondences. And though in casting up a long sum either in ad- 
dition, multiplication, or division, every part be only a progression of the 
mind, taking a view of its own ideas, and considering the agreement or dis- 
agreement ; and the resolution of the question be nothing but the result of 
the whole, made up of such particulars, whereof the mind has a clear per- 
ception : yet without setting down the several parts by marks, whose pre- 
cise significations are known, and by marks that last and remain in view 
when the memory had let them go, it would be almost impossible to carry so 



372 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

many different ideas in the mind, without confounding or letting slip some 
parts of the reckoning, and thereby making all our reasonings about it useless. 
In which case, the ciphers or marks help not the mind at all to perceive the 
agreement of any two or more numbers, their equalities or proportions : that 
the mind has only by intuition of its own ideas of the numbers themselves. 
But the numerical characters are helps to the memory, to record and retain 
the several ideas about which the demonstration is made, whereby a man 
may know how far his intuitive knowledge, in surveying several of the par- 
ticulars, has proceeded ; that so he may without confusion go on to what is 
yet unknown, and at last have in one view before him the result of all his 
perceptions and reasonings. 

Sect. 20. Remedies of those difficulties. — One part of these disadvan- 
tages in moral ideas, which has made them be thought not capable of de- 
monstration, may in a good measure be remedied by definitions, setting down 
that collection of simple ideas, which every term shall stand for, and then 
using the terms steadily and constantly for that precise collection. And 
what methods algebra, or something of that kind, may hereafter suggest, to 
remove the other difficulties, it is not easy to foretell. Confident I am, that 
if men would in the same method, and with the same indifferency, search 
after moral, as they do mathematical truths, they would find them have a 
stronger connexion one with another, and a more necessary consequence from 
our clear and distinct ideas, and to come nearer perfect demonstration than 
is commonly imagined. But much of this is not to be expected, whilst the 
desire of esteem, riches, or power, makes men espouse the well-endowed 
opinions in fashion, and then seek arguments either to make good their 
beauty, or varnish over and cover their deformity : nothing being so beautiful 
to the eye as truth is to the mind ; nothing so deformed and irreconcileable 
to the understanding as a lie. For though many a man can with satisfaction 
enough own a no very handsome wife in his bosom ; yet who is bold enough 
openly to avow, that he has espoused a falsehood, and received into his 
breast so ugly a thing as a lie 1 ? Whilst the parties of men cram their tenets 
down all men's throats, whom they can get into their power, without permit- 
ting them to examine their truth or falsehood, and will not let truth have fair 
play in the world, nor men the liberty to search after it, what improvements 
can be expected of this kind ] What greater light can be hoped for in the 
moral sciences 1 The subject part of mankind, in most places might, instead 
thereof, with Egyptian bondage expect Egyptian darkness, were not the can- 
dle of the Lord set up by himself in men's minds, which it is impossible for 
the breath or power of man wholly to extinguish. 

Sect. 21. 4. Of real existence ; we have an intuitive knowledge of our 
own; demonstrative, of God's ; sensitive, of some few other things. — As to 
the fourth sort of our knowledge, viz. of the real actual existence of things, 
we have an intuitive knowledge of our own existence ; and a demonstrative 
knowledge of the existence of a God ; of the existence of any thing else, we 
have no other but a sensitive knowledge, which extends not beyond the ob- 
jects present to our senses. 

Sect. 22. Our ignorance great. — Our knowledge being so narrow, as I 
have showed, it will perhaps give us some light into the present state of our 
minds, if we look a little into the dark side, and take a view of our ignorance ; 
which, being infinitely larger than our knowledge, may serve much to the 
quieting of disputes, and improvement of useful knowledge ; if discovering 
how far we have clear and distinct ideas, we confine our thoughts within the 
contemplation of those things that are within the reach of our understandings, 
and launch not out into that abyss of darkness (where we have not eyes to 
see, nor faculties to perceive any thing) out of a presumption that nothing is 
beyond our comprehension. But to be satisfied of the folly of such a con. 
ceit we need not go far. He that knows any thing, know this in the first 
place, that he need not seek long for instances of his ignorance. The mean- 
est, and most obvious things that come in our way have dark sides, that the 



Ch. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 373 

quickest sight cannot penetrate into. The clearest and most enlarged un- 
derstandings of thinking men find themselves puzzled, and at a loss, in every 
particle of matter. We shall the less wonder to find it so, when we consid- 
er the causes of our ignorance ; which, from what has been said, I suppose, 
will be found to be these three : 

First, Want of ideas. 

Secondly, Want of a discoverable connexion between the ideas we have. 

Thirdly, Want of tracing and examining our ideas. 

Sect. 23. First, one cause of it, want of ideas, either such as we have no 
conception of, or such as particularly we have not. — First, There are some 
things, and those not a few, that we are ignorant of, for want of ideas. 

First ; all the simple ideas we have are confined (as I have shown) to those 
we receive from corporeal objects by sensation, and from the operations of 
our own minds as the objects of reflection. Bat how much these few and 
narrow inlets are disproportionate to the vast whole extent of all beings, will 
not be hard to persuade those, who are not so foolish as to think their span 
the measure of all things. What other simple ideas it is possible the crea- 
tures in other parts of the universe may have, by the assistance of senses and 
faculties more, or perfecter, than we have, or different from ours, it is not for 
us to determine. But to say or think there are no such, because we conceive 
nothing of them, is no better an argument, than if a blind man should 
be positive in it, that there was no such thing as sight and colours, because 
he had no manner of idea of any such thing, nor could by any means frame to 
himself any notions about seeing. The ignorance and darkness that is in us, 
no more hinders nor confines the knowledge that is in others, than the blind- 
ness of a mole is an argument against the quick-sightedness of an eagle. He 
that will consider the infinite power, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator of 
all things, will find reason to think it was not all laid out upon so incon- 
siderable, mean, and impotent a creature, as he will find man to be ; who, in 
all probability, is one of the lowest of all intellectual beings. What faculties 
therefore other species of creatures have, to penetrate into the nature and 
inmost constitution of things ; what ideas they may receive from them, far 
different from ours ; we know not. This we know, and certainly find, that 
we want several other views of them, besides those we have, to make discov- 
eries of them more perfect. And we may be convinced that the ideas we can 
attain to by our faculties, are very disproportionate to things themselves, 
when a positive, clear, distinct one of substance itself, which is the founda- 
tion of all the rest, is concealed from us. But want of ideas of this kind 
being a part, as well as cause of our ignorance, cannot be described. Only 
this, I think, I may confidently say of it, that the intellectual and sensible 
world are in this perfectly alike ; that that part which we see of either of 
them, holds no proportion with what we see not ; and whatsoever we can 
reach with our eyes, or our thoughts, of either of them, is but a point, almosr 
nothing in comparison of the rest. 

Sect. 24. Because of their remoteness; or, Secondly, another great cause 
of ignorance is the want of ideas we are capable of. As the want of ideas, 
which our faculties are not able to give us, shuts us wholly from those views 
of things which it is reasonable to think other beings, perfecter than we, 
have, of which we know nothing, so the want of ideas I now speak of keeps 
us in ignorance of things we conceive capable of being known to us. Bulk, 
figure, and motion, we have ideas of. But though we are not without ideas 
of these primary qualities of bodies in general, yet not knowing what is the 
particular bulk, figure, and motion, of the greatest part of the bodies of the 
universe, we are ignorant of the several powers, efficacies, and ways of ope- 
ration, whereby the effects, which we daily see, are produced. These are 
hid from us in some things, by being too remote ; and in others, by being too 
minute. When we consider the vast distance of the known and visible parts 
of the world, and the reasons we have to think that what lies within our ken 
is but, a small part of the universe, we shall then discover a huge abyss of ig- 



374 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

norance. What are the particular fabrics of the great masses of matter, 
which make up the whole stupendous frame of corporeal beings, how far 
they are extended, what is their motion, and how continued or communi- 
cated, and what influence they have one upon another, are contemplations 
that at first glimpse our thoughts lose themselves in. If we narrow our con« 
templations, and confine our thoughts to this little canton, I mean this sys- 
tem of our sun, and the grosser masses of matter that visibly move about *it ; 
what several sorts of vegetables, animals, and intellectual corporeal beings, 
infinitely different from those of our little spot of earth, may there probably 
be in the other planets, to the knowledge of which, even of their outward 
figures and parts, we can no way attain, whilst we are confined to this earth; 
there being no natural means, either by sensation or reflection, to convey 
their certain ideas in our minds ? They are out of the reach of those inlets 
of all our knowledge : and what sorts of furniture and inhabitants those man- 
sions contain in them we cannot so much as guess, much less have clear and 
distinct ideas of them. 

Sect. 25. Or, because of their minuteness. — If a great, nay, far the great- 
est part of the several ranks of bodies in the universe, escape our notice by their 
remoteness, there are others that are no less concealed from us by their mi- 
nuteness. These insensible corpuscles being the active parts of matter, and 
the great instruments of nature, on which depend not only all their second- 
ary qualities, but also most of their natural operations ; our want of precise 
distinct ideas of their primary qualities keeps us in an incurable ignorance of 
what we desire to know about them. I doubt not but if we could discover 
the figure, size, texture, and motion of the minute constituent parts of any 
two bodies, we should know without trial several of their operations one 
upon another, as we do now the properties of a square or a triangle. Did we 
know the mechanical affections of the particles of rhubarb, hemlock, opium, 
and a man ; as a watchmaker does those of a watch, whereby it performs its 
operations, and of a file, which, by rubbing on them will alter the figure ot 
any of the wheels ; we should be able to tell beforehand, that rhubarb will 
purge, hemlock kill, and opium make a man sleep ; as well as a watchmaker 
can, that a little piece of paper laid on the balance will keep the watch from 
going, till it be removed ; or that, some small part of it being rubbed by a 
file, the machine would quite lose its motion, and the watch go no more. 
The dissolving of silver in aqua fortis, and gold in aqua regia, and not vice 
versa, would be then perhaps no more difficult to know, than it is to a smith 
to understand why the turning of one key will open a lock, and not the turn- 
ing of another. But whilst we are destitute of senses acute enough to discover 
the minute particles of bodies, and to give us ideas of their mechanical affec- 
tions, we must be content to be ignorant of their properties and ways of ope- 
ration ; nor can we be assured about them any farther than some few trials 
we make are able to reach. But whether they will succeed again another 
time we cannot be certain. This hinders our certain knowledge of universal 
truths concerning natural bodies ; and our reason carries us herein very little 
beyond particular matter of fact. 

Sect. 26. Hence no science of bodies. — And therefore I am apt to doubt, 
that how far soever human industry may advance useful and experimental 
philosophy in physical things, scientifical will still be out of our reach ; be 
cause we want perfect and adequate ideas of those very bodies which arc 
nearest to us, and most under our command. Those which we have ranked 
into classes under names, and we think ourselves best acquainted with, we 
have but very imperfect and incomplete ideas of. Distinct ideas of the seve- 
ral sorts of bodies that fall under the examination of our senses perhaps we 
may have ; but adequate ideas, I suspect, we have not of any one among 
them. And though the former of these will serve us for common use and 
discourse, yet whilst we want the latter, we are not capable of scientifical 
knowledge ; nor shall ever be able to discover general, instructive, unques- 
tionable truths concerning them. Certainty and demonstration are things 



Ch. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 3?'- 

we must not, in these matters, pretend to. By the colour, figure, taste, and 
smell, and other sensible qualities, we have as clear and distinct ideas or* 
sage and hemlock, as we have of a circle and a triangle : but having no ideas 
of the particular primary qualities of the minute parts of either of these 
plants, nor of other bodies which we would apply them to, we cannot tell 
what effects they will produce ; nor when we see those effects can we so 
much as guess, much less know, their manner of production. Thus having 
no ideas of the particular mechanical affections of the minute parts of bodies 
that are within our view and reach, we are ignorant of their constitutions, 
powers, and operations : and of bodies more remote we are yet more ignor- 
ant, not knowing so much as their very outward shapes, or the sensible and 
grosser parts of their constitutions. 

Sect. 27. Much less of spirits. — This, at first, will show us how dispro- 
portionate our knowledge is to the whole extent even of material beings ; to 
which, if we add the consideration of that infinite number of spirits that may 
be, and probably are, which are yet more remote from our knowledge, 
whereof we have no cognizance, nor can frame to ourselves any distinct ideas 
of their several ranks and sorts, we shall find this cause of ignorance conceal 
from us, in an impenetrable obscurity, almost the whole intellectual world ; a 
greater certainty, and more beautiful world than the material. For bating 
some very few, and those, if I may so call them, superficial ideas of spirit, 
which by reflection we get of our own, and from thence the best we can col- 
lect of the Father of all spirits, the eternal independent Author of them, and 
us, and all things ; we have no certain information, so much as of the exist- 
ence of other spirits, but by revelation. Angels of all sorts are naturally be- 
yond our discovery: and all those intelligences whereof it is likely there are 
more orders than corporeal substances, are things whereof our natural facul- 
ties give us no certain account at all. That there are minds and thinking 
beings in other men as well as himself, every man has a reason, from their 
words and actions, to be satisfied: and the knowledge of his own mind can- 
not suffer a man, that considers, to be ignorant that there is a God. But that 
there are degrees of spiritual beings between us and the great God, who is 
there that by his own search and ability can come to know 1 Much less have 
we distinct ideas of their different natures, conditions, states, powers, and 
several constitutions, wherein they agree or differ from one another, and from 
us. And therefore in what concerns their different species and properties, 
we are under an absolute ignorance. 

Sect. 28. Secondly, want of a discoverable connexion between ideas we 
have. — Secondly, what a small part of the substantial beings that are in the 
universe, the want of ideas leaves open to our knowledge, we have seen. In 
the next place, another cause of ignorance, of no less moment, is a want of a 
discoverable connexion between those ideas we have. For wherever we want 
that, we are utterly incapable of universal and certain knowledge; and are, 
in the former case, left only to observation and experiment : which, how nar- 
row and confined it is, how far from general knowledge, we need not be told. 
I shall give some few instances of this cause of our ignorance, and so leave 
it. It is evident that the bulk, figure, and motion of several bodies about us, 
produce in us several sensations, as of colours, sounds, tastes, smells, plea- 
sure and pain, &c. These mechanical affections of bodies having no affinity at 
all with those ideas they produce in us (there being no conceivable connexion 
between any impulse of any sort of body and any perception of a colour or 
smell, which we find in our minds) we can have no distinct knowledge of 
such operations beyond our experience ; and can reason no otherwise about 
them than as effects produced by the appointment of an infinitely wise agent, 
which perfectly surpass our comprehensions. As the ideas of sensible se- 
condary qualities which we have in our minds, can by us be no ways deduced 
from bodily causes, nor any correspondence or connexion be found between 
them and those primary qualities which (experience shows us) produce them 
in us ; so, on the other side, the operation of our minds upon our bodies is aa 



376 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

inconceivable. How any thought should produce a motion in body is as re- 
mote from the nature of our ideas, as how any body should produce any 
thought in the mind. That it is so, if experience did not convince us, the 
consideration of the things themselves would never be able in the least to dis- 
cover to us. These, and the like, though they have a constant and regular 
connexion, in the ordinary course of things ; yet that connexion being not dis- 
coverable in the ideas themselves, which appearing to have no necessary de- 
pendence one on another, we can attribute their connexion to nothing else 
jut the arbitrary determination of that all-wise agent, who has made them to 
be, and to operate as they do, in a way wholly above our weak understand- 
ings to conceive. 

Sect. 29. Instances. — In some of our ideas there are certain relations, 
habitudes, and connexions, so visibly included in the nature of the ideas them- 
selves, that we cannot conceive them separable from them by any power 
whatsoever. And in these only we are capable of certain and universal know- 
ledge. Thus the idea of a right-lined triangle necessarily carries with it an 
equality of its angles to two right ones. Nor can we conceive this relation, 
this connexion, or these two ideas, to be possibly mutable, or to depend on any 
arbitrary power, which of choice made it thus, or could make it otherwise. 
But the coherence and continuity of the parts of matter ; the production of sen- 
sation in us of colours and sounds, &c. by impulse and motion; nay, the origi- 
nal rules and communication of motion being such, wherein we can discover 
no natural connexion with any ideas we have; we cannot but ascribe them 
to the arbitrary will and good pleasure of the wise architect. I need not, I 
think, here mention the resurrection of the dead, the future state of this globe 
of earth, and such other things, which are by every one acknowledged to de- 
pend wholly on the determination of a free agent. The things that, as far 
as our observation reaches, we constantly find to proceed regularly, we may 
conclude do act by a law set them; but yet by a law that we know not: where- 
by, though causes work steadily, and effects constantly flow from them, yet 
their connexion and dependences being not discoverable in our ideas, we can 
have but an experimental knowledge of them. From all which it is easy to 
perceive what a darkness we are involved in, how little it is of being, 
and the things that are, that we are capable to know. And therefore 
we shall do no injury to our knowledge, when we modestly think with our- 
selves, that we are so far from being able to comprehend the whole nature of 
the universe, and all the things contained in it, that we are not capable of a 
philosophical knowledge of the bodies that are about us, and make a part of 
us: concerning their secondary qualities, powers, and operations, we can have 
no universal certainty. Several effects come every day within the notice of 
our senses, of which we have so far sensitive knowledge; but the causes, 
manner and certainty of their production, for the two foregoing reasons, we 
must be content to be very ignorant of. In these we can go no farther than 
particular experience informs us of matter of fact, and by analogy to guess 
what effects the like bodies are, upon other trials, like to produce. But as 
to a perfect science of natural bodies (not to mention spiritual beings) we 
are, I think, so far from being capable of any such thing, that I conclude it 
lost labour to seek after it. 

Sect. 30. Thirdly, want of tracing our ideas. — Thirdly, where we have 
adequate ideas, and where there is a certain and discoverable connexion be- 
tween them, yet we are often ignorant, for want of tracing those ideas which 
we have, or may have, and for want of finding out those intermediate ideas, 
which may show us what habitude of agreement or disagreement they have 
one with another. And thus many are ignorant of mathematical truths, not 
out of any imperfection of their faculties, or uncertainty in the things them- 
selves, but for want of application in acquiring, examining, and by due ways 
comparing those ideas. That which has most contributed to hinde~ the duo 
tracing of our ideas, and finding out their relations, and agreements or disa- 
greements one with another, has been, I suppose, the ill use of words. It is 



Ch. 3. EXTENT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 377 

impossible that men should ever truly seek, or certainly discover the agree- 
ment or disagreement of ideas themselves, whilst their thoughts flutter about 
or stick only in sounds of doubtful and uncertain significations. Mathema- 
ticians abstracting their thoughts from names, and accustoming themselves to 
set before their minds the ideas themselves that they would consider, and not 
sounds instead of them, have avoided thereby a great part of that perplexity, 
puddering, and confusion, which have so much hindered men's progress in 
other parts of knowledge. For whilst they stick in words of undetermined 
and uncertain signification, they are unable to distinguish true from false, 
certain from probable, consistent from inconsistent, in their own opinions. 
This having been the fate or misfortune of a great part of men of letters, the 
increase brought into the stock of real knowledge has been very little, in pro- 
portion to the schools, disputes, and writings, the world has been filled with ; 
whilst students, being lost in the great wood of words, knew not whereabout 
they were, how far their discoveries were advanced, or what was wanting 
in their own or the general stock of knowledge. Had men, in the discove- 
ries of the materia], done as they have in those of the intellectual world, in- 
volved in all the obscurity of uncertain and doubtful ways of talking, volumes 
writ of navigation and voyages, theories and stories of zones and tides, mul- 
tiplied and disputed ; nay, ships built, and fleets sent out, would never have 
taught us the way beyond the line ; and the antipodes would be still as much 
unknown as when it was declared heresy to hold there were any. But hav- 
ing spoken sufficiently of words, and the ill or careless use that is commonly 
made of them, I shall not say any thing more of it here. 

Sect. 31. Extent in respect to universality. — Hitherto we have examined 
the extent of our knowledge, in respect of the several sorts of beings that 
are. There is another extent of it, in respect of universality, which will also 
deserve to be considered ; and in this regard, our knowledge follows the na- 
ture of our ideas. If the ideas are abstract, whose agreement or disagreement 
we perceive, our knowledge is universal. For what is known of such gene- 
ral ideas, will be true of every particular thing, in whom that essence, i. e. that 
abstract idea, is to be found ; and what is once known of such ideas will be 
perpetually and forever true. So that as to all general knowledge, we must 
search and find it only in our minds, and it is only the examining of our own 
ideas that furnisheth us with that. Truths belonging to essences of things, 
(that is, to abstract ideas) are eternal, and are to be found out by the contem- 
plation only of those essences: as the existences of things are to be known 
only from experience. But having more to say of this in the chapters where 
I shall speak of general and real knowledge, this may here suffice as to the 
universality of our knowledge in general. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF THE REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE. 

Sect. 1. Objection. Knowledge placed in ideas, may be all bare vision. — 
I doubt not but my reader by this time may be apt to think, that 1 have been 
all this while only building a castle in the air ; and be ready to say to 12*\ " ta 
what purpose all this stir? Knowledge, say you, is only the perceptiox. '" 
the agreement or disagreement of our own ideas: but who knows what thos 
ideas may be 1 Is there any thing so extravagant as the imaginations of 
men's brains 1 Where is the head that has no chimeras in it) Or, if there 
Vi a sober and a wise man, what difference will there be, by your rules, be- 
tween his knowledge and that of the most extravagant fancy in the world ) 
They both have their ideas, and perceive their agreement and disagreement 
one with another. If there be any difference between them, the advantage 
will be on the warm-headed man's side, as having the more ideas, and the 
2X 



£78 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

more lively : and so, by your rules, he will be the more knowing. If it be 
true that all knowledge lies only in the perception of the agreement or disa- 
greement of our own ideas, the visions of an enthusiast, and the reasonings 
of a sober man, will be equally certain. It is no matter how things are ; so 
a man observe but the agreement of his own imaginations, and talk confor- 
mably, it is all truth, all certainty. Such castles in the air will be as strong 
holds of truth, as the demonstrations of Euclid. That a harpy is not a cen- 
taur is by this way as certain knowledge, and as much a truth, as that a 
square is not a circle. 

" But of what use is all this fine knowledge of men's own imaginations to 
a man that inquires after the reality of things 1 It matter's not what men's 
fancies are; it is the knowledge of things that is only to be prized : it is this 
alone gives a value to our reasonings, and preference to one man's knowledge 
over another's ; that it is of things as they really are, and not of dreams and 
fancies." 

Sect. 2. Answer, Not so, where ideas agree with things. — To which I 
answer, that if our knowledge of our ideas terminate in them, and reach no 
farther, where there is something farther intended, our most serious thoughts 
will be of little more use than the reveries of a crazy brain ; and the truths 
built thereon of no more weight than the discourses of a man, who sees things 
clearly in a dream, and with great assurance utters them. But I hope, before 
I have done, to make it evident, that this way of certainty, by the knowledge 
of our own ideas, goes a little farther than bare imagination: and I believe it 
will appear that all the certainty of general truths a man has, lies in nothing 
else. 

Sect. 3. — It is evident the mind knows not things immediately, but only 
by the intervention of the ideas it has of them. Our knowledge therefore is 
real, only so far as there is a conformity between our ideas and the reality 
of things. But what shall be here the criterion ? How 6hall the mind, when 
it perceives nothing but its own ideas, know that they agree with things 
themselves 1 This, though it seems not to want difficulty, yet I think, 
there be two sorts of ideas, that, we may be assured, agree with things. 

Sect. 4. As 1. All simple ideas do. — First, the first are simple ideas, 
which, since the mind, as has been shown, can by no means make to itself 
must necessarily be the product of things operating on the mind in a natural 
way, and producing therein those perceptions which by the wisdom and will 
of our Maker they are ordained and adapted to. From whence it follows, 
that simple ideas are no fictions of our fancies, but the natural and regular 
productions of things without us, really operating upon us, and so carry with 
them all the conformity which is intended, or which our state requires ; for 
they represent to us things, under those appearances which they are fitted to 
produce in us, whereby we are enabled to distinguish the sorts of particular 
substances, to discern the states they are in, and so to take them for our ne- 
cessities, and to apply them to our uses. Thus the idea of whiteness, or 
bitterness, as it is in the mind, exactly answering that power which is in any 
body to produce it there, has all the real conformity it can, or ought to have 
with things without us. And this conformity between our simple ideas, and 
the existence of things, is sufficient for real knowledge. 

Sect. 5. 2. All complex ideas, except of substances. — Secondly, all oui 
complex ideas, except those of substances, being archetypes of the mind's 
own making, not intended to be the copies of any thing, nor referred to the 
existence of any thing, as to their originals, cannot want any conformity 
necessary to real knowledge. For that which is not designed to represent 
any thing but itself, can never be capable of a wrong representation, nor 
mislead us from the true apprehension of any thing, by its dislikeness to it ; 
and such, excepting those of substances, are all our complex ideas; which, as 
I have shown in another place, are combinations of ideas, which the m ; nd, 
by its free choice, puts together, without considering any connexion they 
have in nature. And hence it is, that in all these sorts the ideas themselves 



Ch. 4. REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE. 379 

are considered as the archetypes, and things no otherwise regarded, but as 
they are conformable to them. So that we cannot but be infallibly certain, 
that all the knowledge we attain concerning these ideas is real, and reaches 
things themselves ; because in all our thoughts, reasonings, and discourses 
of this kind, we intend things no farther than as they are conformable to our 
ideas. So that in these we cannot miss of a certain and undoubted reality. 

Sect. 6. Hence the reality of mathematical knowledge. — I doubt not but 
it will be easily granted, that the knowledge we have of mathematical truths 
is not only certain, but real knowledge ; and not the bare empty vision of vain 
insignificant chimeras of the brain : and yet, if we will consider, we shall find 
that it is only of our own ideas. The mathematician considers the truth and 
properties belonging to a rectangle, or circle, only as they are in idea in his 
own mind. For it is possible he never found either of them existing mathema- 
tically, i. e. precisely true, in his life. But yet the knowledge he has of any 
truths or properties belonging to a circle, or any other mathematical figure, are 
nevertheless true and certain, even of real things existing ; because real things 
are no farther concerned, nor intended to be meant by any such propositions, 
than as things really agree to those archetypes in his mind. Is it true of the 
idea of a triangle, that its three angles are equal to two right ones 1 It is true 
also of a triangle, wherever it really exists. Whatever other figure exists, 
that is not exactly answerable to the idea of a triangle in his mind, is not at 
all concerned in that proposition : and therefore he is certain all his know- 
ledge concerning such ideas is real knowledge ; because intending things 
no farther than they agree with those his ideas, he is sure what he knows 
concerning those figures, when they have barely an ideal existence in his 
mind, will hold true of them also, when they have a real existence in matter ; 
his consideration being barely of those figures, which are the same, where- 
ever or however they exist. 

Sect. 7. And of moral. — And hence it follows, that moral knowledge is 
as capable of real certainty as mathematics. For certainty being but the per- 
ception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas ; and demonstration 
nothing but the perception of such agreement, by the intervention of othei 
ideas, or mediums ; our moral ideas, as well as mathematical, being arche- 
types themselves, and so adequate and complete ideas ; all the agreement oi 
disagreement which we shall find in them will produce real knowledge, as 
well as in mathematical figures. 

Sect. 8. Existence not required to make it real. — For the attaining of 
knowledge and certainty, it is requisite that we have determined ideas ; and, 
to make our knowledge real, it is requisite that the ideas answer their arche- 
types. Nor let it be wondered, that I place the certainty of our knowledge 
in the consideration of our ideas, with so little care and regard (as it may 
seem) to the real existence of things ; since most of those discourses, which 
take up the thoughts, and engage the disputes of those who pretend to make 
it their business to inquire after truth and certainty, will, I presume, upon ex- 
amination, be found to be general propositions, and notions in which exist- 
ence is not at all concerned. All the discourses of the mathematicians about 
the squaring of a circle, conic sections, or any other part of mathematics, con- 
cern not the existence of any of those figures ; but their demonstrations, 
which depend on their ideas, are the same, whether there be any square or 
circle existing in the world or no. In the same manner the truth and cer- 
tainty of moral discourses abstracts from the lives of men, and the existence 
of t hose virtues in the world whereof they treat. Nor are Tully 's Offices 
less true, because there is nobody in the world that exactly practices his 
rules* and lives up to that pattern of a virtuous man which he has given us. 
and which existed nowhere, when he writ, but in idea. If it be true in 
speculation, i. e. in idea, that murder deserves death, it will also be true in 
reality of any action that exists conformable to that idea of murder. As for 
other actions, the truth of that proposition concerns them not. And thus it 
is of all other species of things, which have no other essences but those ideas 
which are in the minds of men. 



380 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

Sect. 9. Nor will it be less true or certain, because moral ideas are of 
our own making and naming. — But it will here be said, that if moral know- 
ledge be placed in the contemplation of our own moral ideas, and those, as 
other modes, be of our own making-, what strange notions will there be of jus- 
tice and temperance ! What confusion of virtues and vices, if every one 
may make what ideas of them he pleases 1 No confusion nor disorder in the 
things themselves, nor in the reasonings about them : no more than (in mathe- 
matics) there would be a disturbance in the demonstration, or a change in 
the properties of figures, and their relations one to another, if a man should 
make a triangle with four corners, or a trapezium with four right angles ; that 
is, in plain English, change the names of the figures, and call that by one 
name which mathematicians call ordinarily by another. For let a man make 
to himself the idea of a figure with three angles ; whereof one is a right one, 
and call it, if he please, equilaterum, or trapezium, or any thing else, the pro- 
perties of and demonstrations about that idea will be the same, as if he called 
it a rectangular triangle. I confess the change of the name, by the impro- 
priety of speech, will at first disturb him, who knows not what idea it stands 
for ; but as soon as the figure is drawn, the consequences and demonstration 
are plain and clear. Just the same is it in moral knowledge ; let a man have 
the idea of taking from others, without their consent, what their honest in- 
dustry has possessed them of, and call this justice if he please. He that 
takes the name here without the idea put to it, will be mistaken, by joining 
another idea of his own to that name : but strip the idea of that name, or take 
it, such as it is, in the speaker's mind, and the same things will agree to it, as 
if you had called it injustice. Indeed, wrong names in moral discourses breed 
usually more disorder, because they are not so easily rectified as in mathe- 
matics, where the figure, once drawn and seen, makes the name useless ana 
of no force. For what need of a sign, when the thing signified is present 
and in view 1 But in moral names that cannot be so easily and shortly done, 
because of the many decompositions that go to the making up the complex 
ideas of those modes. But yet for all this, miscalling of any of those ideas, 
contrary to the usual signification of the words of that language, hinders not 
but that we may have certain and demonstrative knowledge of their several 
agreements and disagreements, if we will carefully, as in mathematics, keep 
to the same precise ideas, and trace them in their several relations one to 
another, without being led away by their names. If we but separate the idea 
under consideration from the sign that stands for it, our knowledge goes 
equally on in the discovery of real truth and certainty, whatever sounds we 
make use of. 

Sect. 10. Misnaming disturbs not the certainty of the knowledge. — One 
thing more we are to take notice of, that where God, or any other lawmaker, 
hath defined any moral names, there they have made the essence of that spe- 
cies to which that name belongs ; and there it is not safe to apply or use 
them otherwise : but in other cases it is bare impropriety of speech to applv 
them contrary to the common usage of the country. But yet even this too 
disturbs not the certainty of that knowledge, which is still to be had by a due 
contemplation and comparing of those even nicknamed ideas. 

Sect. 11. Ideas of substances have their archetypes without us. — Thirdly, 
there is another sort of complex ideas, which, being referred to archetypes 
without us, may differ from them, and so our knowledge about them may 
come short of being real. Such are our ideas of substances, which consist- 
ing of a collection of simple ideas, supposed taken from the works of nature, 
may yet vary from them, by having more or different ideas united in them, 
than are to be found united in the things themselves. From whence it comes 
to pass, that they may, and often do, fail of being exactly conformable to things 
themselves. 

Sect. 12. So far as they agree with those, so far our knowledge concern- 
ing them is real. — I say, then, that to have ideas of substances, which, by 
being conformable to things, may afford us real knowledge, it is not enough, 



Ch. 4. REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE. Sal 

as in modes, to put together such ideas as have no inconsistence, though they 
did never before so exist : v. g. the ideas of sacrilege or perjury, &c. were as 
real and true ideas before as after the existence of any such fact. But our 
ideas of substances being supposed copies, and referred to archetypes with- 
out us, must still be taken from something that does or has existed ; they 
must not consist of ideas put together at the pleasure of our thoughts, with- 
out any real pattern they were taken from, though we can perceive no incon- 
sistence in such a combination. The reason whereof is, because we know- 
ing not what real constitution it is of substances, whereon our simple ideas 
depend, and which really is the cause of the strict union of some of them one 
with another, and the exclusion of others ; there are very few of them that 
we can be sure are, or are not, inconsistent in nature, any farther than ex- 
perience and sensible observation reach. Herein, therefore, is founded the 
reality of our knowledge concerning substances, that all our complex ideas 
of them must be such, and such only, as are made up of such simple ones as 
have been discovered to coexist in nature. And our ideas being thus true, 
though not, perhaps, very exact copies, are yet the subjects of real (as far as 
we have any) knowledge of them. Which (as has been already shown) will 
not be found to reach very far : but so far as it does, it will still be real know- 
ledge. Whatever ideas we have, the agreement we find they have with 
others will still be knowledge. If those ideas be abstract, it will be general 
knowledge. But to make it real concerning substances, the ideas must be 
taken from the real existence of things. Whatever simple ideas have been 
found to coexist in any substance, these we may with confidence join toge- 
ther again, and so make abstract ideas of substances. For whatever have 
once had a union, in nature, may be united again. 

Sect. 13. In our inquiries about substances, we must consider ideas, and 
not confine our thoughts to names, or species supposed set out by names. — 
This, if we rightly consider, and confine not our thoughts and abstract ideas 
\o names, as if there were or could be no other sort of things than what 
known names had already determined, and as it were set out; we should think 
of things with greater freedom and less confusion than perhaps we do. It 
would possibly be thought a bold paradox, if not a very dangerous falsehood, 
if I should say, that some changelings, who have lived forty years together 
without any appearance of reason, are something between a man and a beast: 
which prejudice is founded upon nothing else but a false supposition, that 
these two names, man and beast, stand for distinct species so set out by real 
essences, that there can come no other species between them : whereas, if 
we will abstract from those names, and the supposition of such specific es- 
sences made by nature, wherein all things of the same denominations did 
exactly and equally partake ; if we would not fancy that there were a cer- 
tain number of these essences, wherein all things, as in moulds, were cast 
and formed, we should find that the idea of the shape, motion, and life of a 
man without reason, is as much a distinct idea, and makes as much a distinct 
sort of things from man and beast, as the idea of the shape of an ass with 
reason would be different from either that of man or beast, and be a species 
of animal between or distinct from both. 

Sect. 14. Objection against a changeling being something between a 
man and beast, answered. — Here every body will be ready to ask, if change- 
lings may be supposed something between man and beast, pray what are 
they 1 I answer changelings, which is as good a word to signify something 
different from the signification of man or beast, as the names man and beast 
are to have significations different one from the other. This, well consid- 
ered, would resolve this matter, and show my meaning without any more 
ado. But I am not so unacquainted with the zeal of some men, which en- 
ables them to spin consequences, and to see religion threatened whenever 
any one ventures to quit their forms of speaking, as not to foresee what names 
such a proposition as this is like to be charged with : and without doubt it 
will be asked, if changelings are something between man and beast, what wiP 



382 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

become of them in the other world l To which answer, first, it concern? 
me not to know or inquire. To their own Master tney stand or fall. Itwiii 
make their state neither better nor worse, whether we determine any thing 
of it or no. They are in the hands of a faithful Creator and a bountifui 
Father, who disposes not of his creatures according to our narrow thoughts 
or opinions, nor distinguishes them according to names and species of our 
contrivance. And we, that know so little of this present world we are in, 
may, I think, content ourselves without being peremptory in defining the differ- 
ent states which creatures shall come into when they go off this stage. It 
may suffice us, that he hath made known to all those who are capable of 
instruction, discoursing, and reasoning, that they shall come to an account, 
and receive according to what they have done in this body. 

Sect. 15. But, secondly, I answer, the force of these men's questions (viz. 
will you deprive changelings of a future state?) is founded on one of these 
two suppositions, which are both false. The first is, that all things that 
have the outward shape and appearance of a man, must necessarily be de- 
signed to an immortal future being after this life : or, secondly, that whatever 
is of human birth must be so. Take away these imaginations, and such 
questions will be groundless and ridiculous. I desire then those who think 
there is no more but an accidental difference between themselves and change- 
lings, the essence in both being exactly the same, to consider whether they 
can imagine, immortality annexed to any outward shape of the body 1 The 
very proposing of it is, I suppose, enough to make them disown it. No one 
yet, that ever I heard of, how much soever immersed in matter, allowed that 
excellency to any figure of the gross sensible outward parts, as to affirm eter- 
nal life due to it, or a necessary consequence of it; or that any mass of mat- 
ter should, after its dissolution here, be again restored hereafter to an ever- 
'.a sting state of sense, perception, and knowledge, only because it was 
moulded into this or that figure, and had such a particular frame of its visible 
parts. Such an opinion as this, placing immortality in a certain superficial 
figure, turns out of doors all consideration of soul or spirit, upon whose ac- 
count alone some corporeal beings have hitherto been concluded immortal, 
and others not. This is to attribute more to the outside than inside of things ; 
and to place the excellency of a man more in the external shape of his body, 
than internal perfections of his soul : which is but little better than to annex 
the great and inestimable advantage of immortality and life everlasting, which 
lie has above other material beings, — to annex it, I say, to the cut of his 
beard, or the fashion of his coat. For this or that outward mark of our bo- 
dies no more carries with it the hope of an eternal duration, than the fashion 
of a man's suit gives him reasonable grounds to imagine it will never wear 
out, or that it will make him immortal. It will perhaps be said, that nobody 
thinks tnat the shape makes any thing immortal, but it is the shape is the 
sign of a rational soul within, which is immortal. I wonder who made it the 
sign of any such thing: for barely saying it will not make it so. It would 
require some proofs to persuade one of it. No figure that I know speaks 
any such language. For it may as rationally be concluded, that the dead 
body of a man, wherein there is to be found no more appearance or action of 
life than there is in a statue, has yet nevertheless a living soul in it, because 
of its shape, as that there is a rational soul in a changeling, because he has 
the outside of a rational creature; when his actions carry far less marks of 
reason with them, in the whole course of his life, than what are to be found 
in many a beast. 

Sect. 18. Monsters. — But it is the issue of rational parents, and must 
therefore be concluded to have a rational soul. I know not by what logic 
you must so conclude. I am sure this is a conclusion that men nowhere allow 
of. For if they did, they would not make bold, as every where they do, to de- 
stroy ill-formed and misshaped productions. Ay, but these are monsters. Let 
them be so ; what will your drivelling, unintelligent, intractable changeling 
he 1 Shall a defect in the body make a monster ; a defect in the mind (the 



Ch. 4. REALITY OF KNOWLEDGE. 383 

far more noble, and, in the common phrase, the far more essential part), not ? 
Shall the want of a nose, or a neck, make a monster, and put such issue out 
of the rank of men ; the want of reason and understanding, not? This is to 
bring- all back again to what was exploded just now : this is to place all in 
tiie shape, and to take the measure of a man only by his outside. To show 
that, according to the ordinary way of reasoning in this matter, people do 
lay the whole stress on the figure, and resolve the whole essence of the spe- 
cies of man (as they make it) into the outward shape, how unreasonab]e 
soever it be, and how much soever they disown it, we need but trace their 
thoughts and practice a little farther, and then it will plainly appear. The 
well-shaped changling is a man, has a rational soul, though it appear not ; 
("his is past doubt, say you. Make the ears a little longer, and more pointed, 
and the nose a little flatter than ordinary, and then you begin to boggle : make 
the face yet narrower, flatter, and longer, and then you are at a stand : add 
still more and more of the likeness of a brute to it, and let the head be per- 
fectly that of some other animal, then presently it is a monster ; and it is de- 
monstration with you that it hath no rational soul, and mast be destroyed. 
Where now, I ask, shall be the just measure of the utmost bounds of that 
shape, that carries with it a rational soul ? For since there have been human 
fostuses produced, half beast, and half man; and others three parts one, and 
one part the other ; and so it is possible they may be in all the variety of ap- 
proaches to the one or the other shape, and may have several degrees of mixture 
of the likeness of a man or a brute ; I would gladly know what are those precise 
lineaments, which, according to this hypothesis, are, or are not capable of a 
rational soul to be joined to them. What sort of outside is the certain sign 
that there is, or is not such an inhabitant within 1 For till that be done, we 
talk at random of man : and shall always, I fear, do so, as long as we give 
ourselves up to certain sounds, and the imaginations of settled and fixed spe- 
cies in nature, we know not what. But after all, I desire it may be consid- 
ered, that those who think they have answered the difficulty by telling us, 
that a misshaped foetus is a monster, run into the same fault they are arguing 
against, by constituting a species between man and beast. For what else, 
I pray, is their monster in the case (if the word monster signifies any thing 
at all) but something neither man nor beast, but partaking somewhat of 
either ] And just so is the changeling before-mentioned. So necessary is it 
to quit the common notion of species and essences, if we will truly look into 
the nature of things, and examine them, by what our faculties can discover 
in them as they exist, and not by groundless fancies, that have been taken up 
about them. 

Secjt. 17. Words and species. — I have mentioned this here, because I 
think we cannot be too cautious that words and species, in the ordinary no- 
tions which we have been used to of them, impose not on us. For I am apt 
to think, therein lies one great obstacle to our clear and distinct knowledge, 
especially in reference to substances ; and from thence has risen a great part 
of the difficulties about truth and certainty. Would we accustom ourselves 
to separate our contemplations and reasonings from words, we might, in a 
great measure, remedy this inconvenience within our own thoughts ; but yet 
it would still disturb us in our discourse with others, as long as we retained 
the opinion, that species and their essences were any thing else but our ab- 
stract ideas (such as they are) with names annexed to them, to be the signs of 
them. 

Sect. 18. Recapitulation. — Wherever we perceive the agreement or dis- 
agreement of any of our ideas, there is certain knowledge : and wherever we 
are sure those ideas agree with the reality of things, there is certain real 
knowledge. Of which agreement of our ideas, with the reality of things, 
having here given the marks, I think I have shown wherein it is, that cer- 
famtv, -.ea^ certainty, consists : which, whatever it was to others, was, I con- 
fess, to me, Heretofore, one of those desiderata which I found great want of. 



3&4 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4 

CHAPTER V. 

OF TRUTH IN GENERAL. 

Sect. 1. What truth is. — What is truth? was an inquiry many ages since 
and it being that which all mankind either do, or pretend to search after, it 
cannot but be worth our while carefully to examine wherein it consists, and 
so acquaint ourselves with the nature of it, as to observe how the mind dis- 
tinguishes it from falsehood. 

Sect. 2. A right joining or separating of signs, i. e. ideas or words. — 
Truth, then, seems to me, in the proper import of the word, to signify no- 
thing but the joining or separating of signs, as the things signified by them 
do agree or disagree one with another. The joining or separating of signs, 
here meant, is what by another name we call proposition. So that truth 
properly belongs only to propositions ; whereof there are two sorts, viz. men- 
tal and verbal ; as there are two sorts of signs commonly made use of, viz. 
ideas and words. 

Sect. 3. Which make mental or verbal propositions. — To form a clear 
notion of truth, it is very necessary to consider truth of thought and truth of 
words, distinctly one from another: but yet it is very difficult to treat of them 
asunder; because it is unavoidable, in treating of mental propositions, to 
make use of words; and then the instances given of mental propositions 
cease immediately to be barely mental, and become verbal. For a mental 
proposition being nothing but a bare consideration of the ideas, as they are 
in our minds, stripped of names, they lose the nature of purely mental pro- 
positions,, as soon as they are put into words. 

Sect. 4. Mental propositions are very hard to be treated of. — And that 
which makes it yet harder to treat of mental and verbal propositions sepa- 
rately is, that most men, if not all, in their thinking and reasonings within 
themselves, make use of words instead of ideas ; at least when the subject 
of their meditations contains in it complex ideas. Which is a great evidence 
of the imperfection and uncertainty of our ideas of that kind, and may, if 
attentively made use of, serve for a mark to show us what are those things 
we have clear and perfect established ideas of, and what not. For if we will 
curiously observe the way our mind takes in thinking and reasoning, we shall 
find, I suppose, that when we make any propositions within our own thoughts 
about white or black, sweet or bitter, a triangle or a circle, we can and often 
do frame in our minds the ideas themselves, without reflecting on the names. 
But when we would consider, or make propositions about the more complex 
ideas, as of a man, vitriol, fortitude, glory, we usually put the name for the 
idea : because the ideas these names stand for, being for the most part imper- 
fect, confused, and undetermined, we reflect on the names themselves, be- 
cause they are more clear, certain, and distinct, and readier occur to our 
thoughts than the pure ideas ; and so we make use of these words instead of 
the ideas themselves, even when we would meditate and reason within our- 
selves, and make tacit mental propositions. In substances, as has been 
already noticed, this is occasioned by the imperfection of our ideas; we 
making the name stand for the real essence, of which we have no idea at all. 
In modes, it is occasioned by the great number of simple ideas that go to the 
making them up. For many of them being compounded, the name occurs 
much easier than the complex idea itself, which requires time and attention 
to be recollected, and exactly represented to the mind, even in those men 
w ho have formerly been at the pains to do it ; and is utterly impossible to be 
done by those, who, though they have ready in their memory the greatest 
part of the common words of that language, yet perhaps never troubled 
themselves in all their lives to consider what precise ideas the most of them 



Ch. 5. TRUTH IN GENERAL. 385 

stood for. Some confused or obscure notions have served the 5 .' turns, and 
many who talk very much of religion and conscience, of church and faith, 
of power and right, of obstructions and humours, melancholy and choler, 
would perhaps have little left in their thoughts and meditations, if one should 
desire them to think only of the things themselves, and lay by those words, 
with which they so often confound others, and not seldom themselves also. 

Sect. 5. — Being nothing but the joining or separating ideas withou* 
words. — But to return to the consideration of truth: we must, I say, observe 
two sorts of propositions that we are capable of making. 

First, mental, wherein the ideas in our understandings are without the use 
of words put together, or separated by the mind, perceiving or judging of 
their agreement or disagreement. 

Secondly, verbal propositions, which are words, the signs of our ideas, 
put together, or separated in affirmative or negative sentences. By which 
way of affirming or denying, these signs, made by sounds, are, as it were, put 
together, or separated one from another. So that proposition consists in 
joining or separating signs, and truth consists in the putting together, or 
separating those signs, according as the things which they stand for agree 
or disagree. 

Sect. 6. When mental propositions contain real truth, and when verbal. 
— Every one's experience will satisfy him, that the mind, either by perceiv- 
ing or supposing the agreement or disagreement of any of its ideas, does 
tacitly within itself put them into a kind of proposition affirmative or negative, 
which I have endeavoured to express by the terms putting together and sepa- 
rating. But this action of the mind, which is so familiar to every thinking 
and reasoning man, is easy to be conceived by reflecting on what passes in us, 
when we affirm or deny, than to be explained by words. When a man has 
in his head the idea of two lines, viz. the side and diagonal of a square, 
whereof the diagonal is an inch long, he may have the idea also of the divis- 
ion of that line into a certain number of equal parts ; v. g. into 'five, ten, a 
hundred, a thousand, or any other number, and may have the idea of that 
inch line being divisible, or not divisible, into such equal parts, as a certain 
number of them will be equal to the side-line. Now, whenever he perceives, 
believes or supposes such a kind of divisibility to agree or disagree to his 
idea of that line, he, as it were, joins or separates those two ideas, viz. the 
idea of that line, and the idea of that kind of divisibility ; and so makes a men- 
tal proposition, which is true or false, according as such a kind of divisibility, 
a divisibility into such aliquot parts, does really agree to that line or no. 
When ideas are so put together, or separated in the mind, as they, or the 
things they stand for, do agree or not, that is, as I may call it, mental truth. But 
truth of words is something more ; and that is the affirming or denying ol 
words one of another, as the idea they stand for agree or disagree : and this 
again is twofold ; either purely verbal and trifling, which I shall speak of, 
chap. viii. or real and instructive, which is the object of that real knowledge 
which we have spoken of already. 

Sect. 7. Objection against verbal truth, that thus it may all be chimeri- 
cal. — But here again will be apt to occur the same doubt about truth, that did 
about knowledge : and it will be objected, that if truth be nothingbut the join- 
ing and separating of words in propositions, as the idea they stand for agree or 
disagree in men's minds, the knowledge of truth is not so valuable a thing as 
it is taken to be, nor worth the pains and time men employ in the search of 
it ; since by this account it amounts to no more than the conformity of words 
to the chimeras of men's brains. Who knows not what odd notions many 
men's heads are filled with, and what strange ideas all men's brains are capable 
of 1 ? But if we rest here, we know the truth of nothing by this rule, but of 
the visionary words in our own imaginations ; nor have other truth, but 
what as much concerns harpies and centaurs as men and horses. For 
those, and the like, may be ideas in our heads, and have their agreement 
and disagreement there, as well as the ideas of real beings, and so have as 
2 Y 



386 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

true propositions made about them. And it will be altogether as true a pro- 



position to say all centaurs are animals, as that all men are animals; and the 
certainty of one as great as the other. Tor in both the propositions, the 
words are put together according to the agreement of the ideas in our minds ; 
and the agreement of the idea of animal with that of centaur, is as clear and 
visible to the mind, as the agreement of the idea of animal with that of man : 
and so these two propositions are equally true, equally certain. But of what 
use is all such truth to us ] 

Sect. 8. Answered, real truth is about ideas agreeing of things. — Though 
what has been said in the foregoing chapter, to distinguish real from imagi- 
nary knowledge, might suffice here, in answer to this doubt, to distinguish 
real truth from chimerical, or, if you please, barely nominal, they depending 
both on the same foundation ; yet it may not be amiss here again to consider, 
that though our words signify nothing but our ideas, yet being designed by 
them to signify things, the truth they contain, when put into propositions, 
will be only verbal, when they stand for ideas in the mind, that have not an 
agreement with the reality of things. And therefore truth, as well as know- 
ledge, may well come under the distinction of verbal and real ; that being only 
verbal truth, wherein terms are joined according to the agreement or disa- 
greement of the ideas they stand for, without regarding whether our ideas 
are such as really have, or are capable of having, an existence in nature. But 
then it is they contain real truth, when these signs are joined, as our ideas 
agree ; and when our ideas are such as we know are capable of having an 
existence in nature : which in substances we cannot know, but by knowing 
that such have existed. 

Sect. 9. Falsehood is the joining of names otherwise than their ideas 
agree. — Truth is the marking down in words the agreement or disagreement 
of ideas as it is. Falsehood is the marking down in words the agreement or 
disagreement of ideas otherwise than it is. And so far as these ideas, thus 
marked by sounds, agree to their archetypes, so far only is the truth real. The 
knowledge of this truth consists in knowing what ideas the words stand for, 
and the perception of the agreement or disagreement of those ideas, ac- 
cording as it is marked by those words. 

Sect. 10. General propositions to be treated of more at Targe. — But be- 
cause words are looked on as the great conduits of truth and knowledge, and 
that in conveying and receiving of truth, and commonly in reasoning about 
it, we make use of words and propositions ; I shall more at large inquire, 
wherein the certainty of real truths, contained in propositions, consists, and 
where it is to be had ; and endeavour to show in what sort of universal pro 
positions we are capable of being certain of their real truth or falsehood. 

I shall begin with general propositions, as those which most employ our 
thoughts, and exercise our contemplation. General truths are most looked 
after by the mind, as those that most enlarge our knowledge ; and by their 
comprehensiveness satisfying us at once of many particulars, enlarge our 
view, and shorten our way to knowledge. 

Sect. 11. Moral and metaphysical truth. — Besides truth, taken in the 
strict sense before mentioned, there are other sorts of truth ; as, 1. Moral 
truth, which is speaking of things according to the persuasion of our own 
minds, though the proposition we speak agree not to the reality of things. 
2. Metaphysical truth, which is nothing but the real existence of things, con- 
formable to the ideas to which we have annexed their names. This, though 
it seems to consist in the very beings of things, yet, when considered a little 
nearly, will appear to include a tacit proposition, whereby the mind joins that 
particular thing to the idea it had before settled with a name to it. But these 
considerations of truth, either having been before taken notice of, or not be- 
i ng much to our present purpose, it may suffice here only to have mentioned 
them. 



Ch. 6. UNIVERSAL PROPOSITIONS. 387 

CHAPTER VI. 

OF UNIVERSAL PROPOSITIONS, THEIR TRUTH AND CERTAINTY 

Sect. 1. Treating of words necessary to knowledge. — Though the ex- 
amining and judging of ideas by themselves, their names being quite laid 
aside, be the best and surest way to clear and distinct knowledge ; yet, through 
the prevailing custom of using sounds for ideas, T think it is very seldom 
practised. Every one may observe how common it is for names to be 
made use of, instead of the ideas themselves, even when men think and 
reason within their own breasts; especially if the ideas be very complex, and 
made up of a great collection of simple ones. This makes the consideration 
of words and propositions so necessary a part of the treatise of knowledge, 
that it is very hard to speak intelligibly of the one without explaining the 
other. 

Sect. 2. General truths hardly to be understood, but in verbal 'propo- 
sitions. — All the knowledge we have, being only of particular or general 
truths, it is evident that whatever may be done in the former of these, the 
latter, which is that which with reason is most sought after, can never be 
well made known, and is very seldom apprehended, but as conceived and 
expressed in words. It is not therefore out of our way, in the examination 
of our knowledge, to inquire into the truth and certainty of universal pro- 
positions. 

Sect. 3. Certainty twofold, of truth and of knowledge. — But that we 
may not be misled in this case, by that which is the danger everywhere, I 
mean by the doubtfulness of terms, it is fit to observe, that certainty is two- 
fold ; certainty of truth, and certainty of knowledge. Certainty of truth is, 
when words are so put together in propositions, as exactly to express the 
agreement or disagreement of the ideas they stand for, as really it is. Cer- 
tainty of knowledge is to perceive the agreement or disagreement of ideas, 
as expressed in any proposition. This we usually call knowing, or being 
certain of the truth of any proposition. 

Sect. 4. No proposition can be known to be true, where the essence of 
each species mentioned is not known. — Now because we cannot be certain 
of the truth of any general proposition, unless we know the precise bounds 
and extent of the species its terms stand for, it is necessary we should know 
the essence of each species, which is that which constitutes and bounds it. 
This, in all simple ideas and modes, is not hard to do. For in these, the 
real and nominal essence being the same : or, which is all one, the abstract 
idea which the general term stands for being the sole essence and boundary 
that is or can be supposed of the species ; there can be no doubt how far 
the species extends, or what things are comprehended under each term : 
which, it is evident, are all that have an exact conformity with the idea it 
stands for, and no other. But in substances, wherein a real essence distinct 
from the nominal is supposed to constitute, determine, and bound the spe- 
sies, the extent of the general word is very uncertain: because not know- 
ing this real essence, we cannot know what is, or what is not of that species, 
and consequently what may, or may not with certainty be affirmed of it. 
And thus speaking of a man, or gold, or any other species of natural sub- 
stances, as supposed constituted by a precise and real essence, which nature 
regularly imparts to every individual of that kind, whereby it is made to be 
of that species, we cannot be certain of the truth of any affinnaiion or nega- 
tion made of it. For man, or gold, taken in this sense, and used for spe- 
cies of things constituted by real essences, different from the complex idea 
in the mind of the speaker, stand for we know not what ; and the extent of 
these species, with such boundaries, are so unknown and undetermined, that 



S88 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4, 

it is impossible with any certainty to affirm, that all men are rational, or that 
all gold is yellow. But where the nominal essence is kept to, as the boun- 
dary of each species, and men extend the application of any general term 
ao farther than to the particular things in which the complex idea it stands 
for is to be found, there they are in no danger to mistake the bounds of each 
species, nor can be in doubt, on this account, whether any propositions be 
true or no. I have chosen to explain this uncertainty of propositions in this 
scholastic way, and have made use of the terms of essences and species, on 
purpose to show the absurdity and inconvenience there is to think of them 
as of any other sort of realities than barely abstract ideas with names to 
them. To suppose that the species of things are any thing but the sorting 
of them under general names, according as they agree to several abstract 
ideas, of which we make those names the signs, is to confound truth, and 
introduce uncertainty into all general propositions that can be made about 
them. Though therefore these things might, to people not possessed with 
scholastic learning, be treated of in a better and clearer way; yet those 
wrong notions of essences or species, having got root in most people's minds, 
who have received any tincture from the learning which has prevailed in this 
part of the world, are to be discovered and removed, to make way for that 
use of words which should convey certainty with it. 

Sect. 5. This more particularly concerns substances. — The names of 
substances, then, whenever made to stand for species, which are supposed to 
be constituted by real essences, which we know not, are not capable to con- 
vey certainty to the understanding : of the truth of general propositions made 
up of such terms, we cannot be sure. The reason whereof is plain : for how 
can we be sure that this or that quality is in gold, when we know not what 
is or is not gold 1 Since in this way of speaking nothing is gold but what 
partakes of an essence, which we not knowing, cannot know where it is or 
is not, and so cannot be sure that any parcel of matter in the world is, or is 
not in this sense gold ; being incurably ignorant, whether it has or has not 
that which makes any thing to be called gold, i. e. that real essence of gold 
whereof we have no idea at all : this being as impossible for us to know, as 
it is for a blind man to tell in what flower the colour of a pansy is or is not 
to be found, whilst he has no idea of the colour of a pansy at all. Or if we 
could (which is impossible) certainly know where a real essence, which we 
know not, is ; v. g. in what parcels of matter the real essence of gold is ; 
yet could we not be sure, that this or that quality could with truth be affirmed 
of gold ; since it is impossible for us to know, that this or that quality or 
idea has a necessary connexion with a real essence, of which we have no 
idea at all, whatever species that supposed real essence may be imagined to 
constitute. 

Sect. 6. The truth of few universal propositions concerning substances 
is to be known. — On the other side, the names of substances, when made 
use of as they should be, for the ideas men have in their minds, though they 
carry a clear and determinate signification with them, will not yet serve us 
to make many universal propositions, of w T hose truth we can be certain. Not 
because in this use of them we are uncertain what things are signified by 
them, but because the complex ideas they stand for are such combinations of 
simple ones, as carry not with them any discoverable connexion or repug- 
nancy, but with a very few other ideas. 

Sect. 7. Because coexistence of ideas in few cases is to be known. — 
The complex ideas, that our names of the species of substances properly, 
stand for, are collections of such qualities as have been observed to coexist 
in an unknown substratum, which we call substance ; but what other qualities 
necessarily coexist with such combinations we cannot certainly know, unless 
we can discover their natural dependence ; which, in their primary qualities, 
we can go but a very little way in ; and in all their secondary qualities we can 
discover no connexion at all, for the reasons mentioned, chap. iii. ; viz. 1. 
Because we know not the real constitutions of substances, on which each 



Ch. 6. UNIVERSAL PROPOSITIONS. 389 

secondary quality particularly depends. 2. Did we know that, it would serve 
- us only for experimental (not universal) knowledge ; and reach with certainty 
no farther than that bare instance : because our understandings can discover 
no conceivable connexion between any secondary quality and any modification 
whatsoever of any of the primary ones. And therefore there are very few 
general propositions to be made concerning substances, which can carry 
with them undoubted certainty. 

Sect. 8. Instance in gold. — All gold is fixed, is a proposition whose truth 
we cannot be certain of, how universally soever it be believed. For if, ac- 
cording to the useless imagination of the schools, any one supposes the term 
gold to stand for a species of things, set out by nature, by a real essence 
belonging to it, it is evident he knows not what particular substances are of 
that species ; and so cannot, with certainty, affirm any thing universally of 
gold. But if he makes gold stand for a species determined by its nominal 
essence, let the nominal essence, for example, be the complex idea of a body, 
of a certain yellow colour, malleable, fusible, and heavier than any other 
known ; in this proper use of the word gold, there is no difficulty to know 
what is or is not gold. But yet no other quality can with certainty be uni- 
versally affirmed or denied of gold, but what hath a discoverable connexion 
or inconsistency with that nominal essence. Fixedness, for example, having 
no necessary connexion, that we can discover, with the colour, weight, or 
any other simple idea of our complex one, or with the whole combination 
together ; it is impossible that we should certainly know the truth of this 
proposition, that all gold is fixed. 

Sect. 9. As there is no discoverable connexion between fixedness and 
the colour, weight, and other simple ideas of that nominal essence of gold; 
so if we make our complex idea of gold a body yellow, fusible, ductile, 
weighty, and fixed, we shall be at the same uncertainty concerning solubility 
in aqua regia, and for the same reason : since we can never, from considera- 
tion of the ideas themselves, with certainty affirm or deny of a body, whose 
complex idea is made up of yellow, very weighty, ductile, fusible, and fixed, 
that it is soluble in aqua regia ; and so on, of the rest of its qualities. I would 
gladly meet with one general affirmation concerning any quality of gold, that 
any one can certainly know is true. It will, no doubt, be presently objected, 
is not this a universal proposition, " all gold is malleable !" To which I an- 
swer, it is a very certain proposition, if malleableness be apart of the complex 
idea the word gold stands for. But then here is nothing affirmed of gold, but 
that that sound stands for an idea in which malleableness is contained : and 
such a sort of truth and certainty as this, it is to say a centaur is four-footed. 
But if malleableness makes not a part of the specific essence the name of 
gold stands for, it is plain, " all gold is malleable" is not a certain proposi- 
tion. Because let the complex idea of gold be made up of whichsover of its 
other qualities you please, malleableness will not appear to depend on that 
complex idea, nor follow from any simple one contained in it: the connexion 
that malleableness has (if it has any) with those other qualities, being only 
by the intervention of the real constitution of its insensible parts, which, 
since we know not, it is impossible we should perceive that connexion, un- 
less we could discover that which ties them together. 

Sect. 10. As far as any such coexistence can be known, so far universal 
propositions may be certain. But this will go but a little way, because — 
The more, indeed, of these coexisting qualities we unite into one complex 
idea, under one name, the more precise and determinate we make the sig- 
nification of that word; but never yet make it thereby more capable of uni- 
versal certainty, in respect of other qualities, not contained in our complex 
idea ; since we perceive not their connexion or dependence on one another, 
being ignorant both of that real constitution in which they are all founded, 
and also how they flow from it. For the chief part of our knowledge con- 
cerning substances is not, as in other things, barely of the relation of two 
deas that may exist separately ; but is of the necessary connexion and coex- 



590 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

istence of several distinct ideas in the same subject, or of their repugnancy 
so to coexist. Could we begin at the other end, and discover what it was, 
wherein that colour consisted, what made a body lighter or heavier, what 
texture of parts made it malleable, fusible, and fixed, and fit to be dissolved 
in this sort of liquor, and not in another ; if, I say, we had such an idea as 
this of bodies, and could perceive wherein all sensible qualities originally con- 
sist, and how they are produced ; we might frame such ideas of them as 
would furnish us with matter of more general knowledge, and enable us to 
make universal propositions, that should carry general truth and certainty 
with them. But whilst our complex ideas of the sorts of substances are so 
remote from that internal real constitution, on which their sensible qualities 
depend, and are made up of nothing but an imperfect collection of those ap- 
parent qualities our senses can discover ; there can be few general proposi- 
tions concerning substances, of whose real truth we can be certainly assured ; 
since there are but few simple ideas, of whose connexion and necessary 
coexistence we can have certain and undoubted knowledge. I imagine, 
among all the secondary qualities of substances, and the powers relating to 
them, there cannot any two be named, whose necessary coexistence, or re- 
pugnance to coexist, can certainly be known, unless in those of the same 
sense, which necessarily exclude one another, as I have elsewhere shown. 
No one, I think, by the colour that is in any body, can certainly know what 
smell, taste, sound, or tangible qualities it has, nor what alterations it is ca- 
pable to make or receive, on or from other bodies. The same may be said of 
the sound or taste, &c. Our specific names of substances standing for any 
collections of such idea3, it is not to be wondered, that we can with them 
make very few general propositions of undoubted real certainty. But yet, so 
far as any complex idea, of any sort of substances, contains in it any simple 
idea, whose necessary coexistence with any other may be discovered, so far 
universal propositions may with certainty be made concerning it : v. g. could 
any one discover a necessary connexion between malleableness, and the co- 
lour or weight of gold, or any other part of the complex idea signified by that 
name, he might make a certain universal proposition concerning gold in this 
respect; and the real truth of this proposition, "that all gold is malleable," 
would be as certain as of this, " the three angles of all right-lined triangles 
are equal to two right ones." 

Sect. 11. The qualities which make our complex ideas of substances, 
depend mostly on external, remote, and unperceived causes. — Had we such 
ideas of substances, as to know what real constitutions produce those sensible 
qualities we find in them, and how those qualities flowed from thence, we could, 
by the specific ideas of their real essences in our own minds, more certainly 
nnd out their properties, and discover what qualities they had or had not, than 
we can now by our senses : and to know the properties of gold, it would be 
no more necessary that gold should exist, and that we should make experi- 
ments upon it, than it is necessary for the knowing the properties of a trian- 
gle, that a triangle should exist in any matter ; the idea in our minds would 
serve for the one as well as the other. But we are so far from being admitted 
into the secrets of nature, that we scarce so much as ever approach the first 
entrance toward them. For we are wont to consider the substances we meet 
with, each of them as an entire thing by itself, having all its qualities in it- 
self, and independent of other things ; overlooking, for the most part, the 
operations of those invisible fluids they are encompassed with, and upon 
whose motions and operations depend the greatest part of those qualities 
which are taken notice of in them, and are made by us the inherent marks of 
distinction, whereby we know and denominate them. Put a piece of gold 
any where by itself, separate from the reach and influence of all other bodies, 
it will immediately lose all its colour and weight, and perhaps malleableness 
too ; which, for aught I know, would be changed into a perfect friability. 
Water, in which to us fluidity is an essential quality, left to itself, would 
cease to be fluid. But if inanimate bodies owe so much of their present state 



Ch.6. UNIVERSAL PROPOSITIONS. 391 

to other bodies without them, that they would not be what they appear to us, 
were those bodies that environ them removed ; it is yet more so in vegeta- 
bles, which are nourished, grow, and produce leaves, flowers, and seeds in a 
constant succession. And if we look a little nearer into the state of animals, 
we shall find that their dependence, as to life, motion, and the most con- 
siderable qualities to be observed in them, is so wholly on extrinsical causes 
and qualities of other bodies that make no part of them, that they cannot 
subsist a moment without them : though yet those bodies on which they de- 
pend are little taken notice of, and make no part of the complex ideas we 
frame of those animals. Take the air but for a minute from the greatest 
part of living creatures, and they presently lose sense, life, and motion. This 
the necessity of breathing has forced into our knowledge. But how many 
other extrinsical, and possibly very remote bodies, do the springs of these ad- 
mirable machines depend on, which are not vulgarly observed, or so much as 
thought on ; and how many are there, which the severest inquiry can never 
discover ! The inhabitants of this spot of the universe, though removed so 
many millions of miles from the sun, yet depend so much on the duly tem- 
pered motion of particles coming from, or agitated by it, that were this earth 
removed but a small part of that distance out of its present situation, and 
placed a little farther or nearer that source of heat, it is more than probable 
that the greatest part of the animals in it would immediately perish : since 
we find them so often destroyed by an excess or defect of the sun's warmth, 
which an accidental position, in some parts of this our little globe exposes 
them to. The qualities observed in a loadstone must needs have their source 
far beyond the confines of that body ; and the ravage made often on several 
sorts of animals by invisible causes, the certain death (as we are told) of 
some of them, by barely passing the line, or, as it is certain of others, by be- 
ing removed into a neighbouring country ; evidently show that the concur- 
rence and operations of several bodies, with which they are seldom thought to 
have any thing to do, is absolutely necessary to make them be what they ap- 
pear to us, and to preserve those qualities by which we know and distinguish 
them. We are then quite out of the way, when we think that things con- 
tain within themselves the qualities that appear to us in them ; and we in 
vain search for that constitution within the body of a fly, or an elephant, upon 
which depend those qualities and powers we observe in them. For which, 
perhaps, to understand them aright, we ought to look not only beyond this 
our earth and atmosphere, but even beyond the sun, or remotest star our 
eyes have yet discovered. For how much the being and operation of par- 
ticular substances in this our globe depends on causes utterly beyond our 
view, is impossible for us to determine. We see and perceive some of the 
motions and grosser operations of things here about us ; but whence the 
streams come that keep all these curious machines in motion and repair, how 
conveyed and modified, is beyond our notice and apprehension: and the 
great parts and wheels, as I may so say, of this stupendous structure of the 
universe, may, for aught we know, have such a connexion and dependence in 
their influence and operations one upon another, that perhaps things in this 
our mansion would put on quite another face, and cease to be what they are, 
if some one of the stars or great bodies, incomprehensibly remote from us, 
should cease to be or move as it does. This is certain, things, however ab- 
solute and entire they seem in themselves, are but retainers to other parts ot 
nature, for that which they are most taken notice of by us. Their observable 
qualities, actions, and powers, are owing to something without them ; am! 
there is not so complete and perfect a part that we know of nature, which 
does not owe the being it has, and the excellencies of it, to its neighbours ; 
and we must not confine our thoughts within the surface of any body, but look 
a great deal farther, to comprehend perfectly those qualities that are in it. 

Sect. 12. If this be so, it is not to be wondered, that we have very imper- 
fect ideas of substances; and that the real essences, on which depend their 
properties and operations, are unknown to us. We cannot discover so much 



892 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4 

as that size, figure, and texture of their minute and active parts, which is 
really in them ; much less the different motions and impulses made in and 
upon them by bodies from without, upon which depends, and by which is 
formed, the greatest and most remarkable part of those qualities we observe in 
them, and of which our complex ideas of them are made up. This considera- 
tion alone is enough to put an end to all our hopes of ever having the ideas of 
their real essences ; which, whilst we want, the nominal essences we make 
use of instead of them will be able to furnish us but very sparingly with any 
general knowledge, or universal propositions capable of real certainty 

Sect. 13. Judgment may reach farther, but that is not knowledge. — We 
are not therefore to wonder, if certainty be to be found in very few general 
propositions made concerning substances : our knowledge of their qualities 
and properties goes very seldom farther than our senses reach and inform us. 
Possibly inquisitive and observing men may, by strength of judgment, pene- 
trate farther, and on probabilities taken from wary observation, and hints well 
laid together, often guess right at what experience has not yet discovered to 
them. But this is but guessing still ; it amounts only to opinion, and has not 
that certainty which is requisite to knowledge. For all general knowledge 
lies only in our own thoughts, and consists barely in the contemplation of our 
own abstract ideas. Wherever we perceive any agreement or disagreement 
among them, there we have general knowledge ; and, by putting the names 
of those ideas together accordingly in propositions, can with certainty pro- 
nounce general truths. But because the abstract ideas of substances, for 
which their specific names stand, whenever they have any distinct and deter- 
minate signification, have a discoverable connexion or inconsistency with but 
a very few other ideas ; the certainty of universal propositions concerning 
substances is very narrow and scanty in that part, which is our principal in- 
quiry concerning them; and there are scarce any of the names of substances, 
let the idea it is applied to be what it will, of which we can generally and 
with certainty pronounce, that it has or has not this or that other quality be- 
longing to it, and constantly coexisting or inconsistent with that idea, where- 
ever it is to be found. 

Sect. 14. What is requisite for our knowledge of substances. — Before 
we can have any tolerable knowledge of this kind, we must first know what 
changes the primary qualities of one body do regularly produce in the primary 
qualities of another, and how. Secondly, we must know what primary quali- 
ties of any body produce certain sensations or ideas in us. This is in truth 
no less than to know all the effects of matter, under its divers modifications 
of bulk, figure, cohesion of parts, motion, and rest. Which, I think, every 
body will allow, is utterly impossible to be known by us without revelation. 
Nor if it were revealed to us, what sort of figure, bulk, and motion of corpus- 
cles, would produce in us the sensation of a yellow colour, and what sort of 
figure, bulk, and texture of parts, in the superficies of any body, were fit to 
give such corpuscles their due motion to produce that colour ; would that be 
enough to make universal propositions with certainty, concerning the several 
sorts of them, unless we had faculties acute enough to perceive the precise 
bulk, figure, texture and motion of bodies in those minute parts, by which 
they operate on our senses, so that we might by those frame our abstract 
ideas of them. I have mentioned here only corporeal substances, whose 
operations seem to lie more level to our understandings : for as to the opera- 
tions of spirits, both their thinking and moving of bodies, we at first sight find 
ourselves at a loss ; though, perhaps, when we have applied our thoughts a 
little nearer to the consideration of bodies and their operations, and examined 
how far our notions, even in these, reach, with any clearness, beyond sensible 
matter of fact, we shall be bound to confess, that even in these too our dis- 
coveries amount to very little beyond perfect ignorance and incapacity. 

Sect. 15. Whilst our ideas of substances contain not their real consti- 
tutions, we can make but few general certain propositions concerning them 
— This is evident, the abstract complex ideas of substances, for which thei 



Ch. 6. UNIVERSAL PROPOSITIONS. 393 

general names stand, not comprehending their real constitutions, can afford 
us very little universal certainty. Because our ideas of them are not made 
up of that, on which those qualities we observe in them, and would inform 
ourselves about, do depend, or with which they have any certain connexion* 
v. g. let the ideas to which we give the name man be, as it commonly is, a 
body of the ordinary shape, with sense, voluntary motion, and reason joined 
to it. This being the abstract idea, and consequently the essence of our 
species man, we can make but very few general certain propositions concern- 
ing man, standing for such an idea. Because not knowing the real consti- 
tution on which sensation, power of motion, and reasoning, with that peculiar 
shape, depend, and whereby they are united together in the same subject, 
there are very few other qualities with which we can perceive them to have 
a necessary connexion : and therefore we cannot with certainty affirm, that 
all men sleep by intervals ; that no man can be nourished by wood or stones ; 
that all men will be poisoned by hemlock ; because these ideas have no con- 
nexion or repugnancy with this our nominal essence of man, with this abstract 
idea that name stands for. We must in these and the like appeal to trial in 
particular subjects, which can reach but a little way. We must content 
ourselves with probability in the rest; but can have no general certainty, 
whilst our specific idea of man contains that real constitution, which is the 
root, wherein all his inseparable qualities are united, and from whence they 
flow. Whilst our idea, the word man stands for, is only an imperfect col- 
lection of some sensible qualities and powers in him, there is no discernible 
connexion or repugnance between our specific idea and the operation of 
either the parts of hemlock or stones upon his constitution. There are ani- 
mals that safely eat hemlock, and others that are nourished by wood and 
stones : but as long as we want ideas of those real constitutions of different 
sorts of animals, whereon these and the like qualities and powers depend, 
we must not hope to reach certainty in universal propositions concerning 
them. Those few ideas only, which have a discernible connexion with our 
nominal essence, or any part of it, can afford us such propositions. But 
these are so few, and of so little moment, that we may justly look on our 
certain general knowledge of substances as almost none at all. 

Sect. 16. Wherein lies the general certainty of propositions. — To con- 
clude ; general propositions, of what kind soever, are then only capable of 
certainty, when the terms used in them stand for such ideas, whose agree- 
ment or disagreement, as there expressed, is capable to be discovered by us. 
And we are then certain of their truth or falsehood, when we perceive the 
ideas the terms stand for to agree or not agree, according as they are affirmed 
or denied one of another. Whence we may take notice, that general cer- 
tainty is never to be found but in our ideas. Whenever we go to seek it 
elsewhere in experiment, or observations without us, our knowledge goes not 
beyond particulars. It is the contemplation of our own abstract ideas that 
alone is able to afford us general knowledge. 



CHAPTER VII. 

OF MAXIMS. 

Sect. 1. They are self-evident. — There are a sort of propositions, which 
under the name of maxims and axioms have passed for principles of science ; 
and because they are self-evident, have been supposed innate, although 
nobody (that I know) ever went about to show the reason and foundation of 
their clearness or cogency. It may, however, be worth while to inquire into 
the reason of their evidence, and see whether it be peculiar to them alone, 
and also examine how far they influence and govern our other knowledge. 

Sect. 2. Wherein that self-evidence consists. — Knowledge, as has been 
2Z 



S94 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

shown, consists in the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas : 
now where that agreement or disagreement is perceived immediately by itself, 
without the intervention or help of any other, there our knowledge is self- 
evident. This will appear to be so to any one, who will but consider any of 
those propositions, which, without any proof, he assents to at first sight : for 
in all of them he will find, that the reason of his assent is from that agree- 
ment or disagreement, which the mind, by an immediate comparing them, 
finds in those ideas answering the affirmation or negation in the proposition. 

Sect. 3. Self-evidence not 'peculiar to received axioms. — This being so, 
in the next place let us consider, whether this self-evidence be peculiar only 
to those propositions which commonly pass under the name of maxims, 
and have the dignity of axioms allowed them. And here it is plain, that 
several other truths, not allowed to be axioms, partake equally with them in 
this self-evidence. This we shall see, if we go over these several sorts of 
agreement or disagreement of ideas, which I have above mentioned, viz. 
identity, relation, coexistence, and real existence ; which will discover to us, 
that not only those few propositions, which have had the credit of maxims, 
are self-evident, but a great many, even almost an infinite number of other 
propositions are such. 

Sect. 4. 1. As to identity and diversity, all propositions are equally 
self-evident. — For, first, the immediate perception of the agreement or dis- 
agreement of identity, being founded in the mind's having distinct ideas, this 
affords us as many self-evident propositions as we have distinct ideas. 
Every one, that has any knowledge at all, has, as the foundation of it, various 
and distinct ideas : and it is the first act of the mind (without which it can 
never be capable of any knowledge) to know every one of its ideas by itself, 
and distinguish it from others. Every one finds in himself, that he knows 
the ideas he has ; that he knows also when any one is in his understanding, 
and what it is ; and that when more than one are there, he knows them dis- 
tinctly and unconfusedly one from another. Which always being so (it being 
impossible but that he should perceive what he perceives) he can never be in 
doubt when any idea is in his mind, that it is there, and is that idea it is ; 
and that two distinct ideas, when they are in his mind, are there, and are 
not one and the same idea. So that all such affirmations and negations are 
made without any possibility of doubt, uncertainty, or hesitation, and must 
necessarily be assented to as soon as understood ; that is, as soon as we have 
in our minds determined ideas, which the terms in the proposition stand for. 
And therefore whenever the mind with attention considers any proposition, 
so as to perceive the two ideas signified by the terms, and affirmed or denied 
one of the other, to be the same or different ; it is presently and infallibly 
certain of the truth of such a proposition ; and this equally, whether these 
propositions be in terms standing for more general ideas, or such as are less 
so, v. g. whether the general idea of being be affirmed of itself, as in this 
proposition, whatsoever is, is ; or a more particular idea be affirmed of itself, 
as a man is a man ; or, whatsoever is white is white ; or whether the idea of 
being in general be denied of not being, which is the only, (if I may so call 
it) idea different from it, as in this other proposition, it is impossible for the 
same thing to be, and not to be ; or any idea of any particular being be denied 
of another different from it, as, a man is not a horse ; red is not blue. The 
difference of the ideas, as soon as the terms are understood, makes the truth 
of the proposition presently visible, and that with an equal certainty and 
easiness in the less as well as the more general propositions, and all for the 
same reason, viz. because the mind perceives, in any ideas that it has, the 
same ideas to be the same with itself; and two different ideas to be different, 
and not the same. And this it is equally certain of, whether these ideas be 
more or less general, abstract, and comprehensive. It is not therefore alone 
to these two general propositions, whatsoever is, is ; and it is impossible for 
the same thing to be, and not to be ; that this sort of self-evidence belongs 
by any peculiar right. The perception of being, or not being, belongs no 



€h. 7. MAXIMS. 395 

more to these vague ideas, signified by the terms whatsoever and thing 1 , than 
it does to any other ideas. These two general maxims, amounting to no 
more in short but this, that the same is the same, and same is not different, 
are truths known in more particular instances, as well as in these general 
maxims, and known also in particular instances, before these general maxims 
are ever thought on, and draw all their force from the discernment of the 
mind employed about particular ideas. There is nothing more visible than 
that the mind, without the help of any proof, or reflection on either of these 
general propositions, perceives so clearly, and knows so certainly, that the 
idea of white is the idea of white, and not the idea of blue; and that the idea 
of white, when it is in the mind, is there, and is not absent ; that the consi- 
deration of these axioms can add nothing to the evidence or certainty of its 
knowledge. Just so it is (as every one may experiment in himself) in all 
the ideas a man has in his mind: he knows each to be itself, and not to 
be another ; and to be in his mind, and not away when it is there, with a 
certainty that cannot be greater ; and therefore the truth of no general pro- 
position can be known with a greater certainty, nor add any thing to this. 
So that in respect of identity, our intuitive knowledge reaches as far as our 
deas ; and we are capable of making as many self-evident propositions es 
r/e have names for distinct ideas. And I appeal to every one's own mind, 
fvhether this proposition, a circle is a circle, be not as self-evident a propo- 
sition, as that consisting of more general terms, whatsoever is, is] and again, 
whether this proposition, blue is not red, be not a proposition that the mind 
;an no more doubt of, as soon as it understands the words, than it does of 
iiat axiom, it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be 1 and so 
Df all the like. 

Sect. 5. 2. In coexistence we have few self-evident propositions. — Se- 
jondly, as to coexistence, or such necessary connexion between two ideas, 
/hat, in the subject where one of them is supposed, there the other must ne- 
cessarily be also : of such agreement or disagreement as this the mind has an 
immediate perception but in very few of them. And therefore in this sort we 
have but very little intuitive knowledge ; nor are there to be found very many 
propositions that are self-evident, though some there are ; v. g. the idea of 
filling a place equal to the contents of its superficies, being annexed to our 
idea of body, I think it is a self-evident proposition, that two bodies cannot be 
in the same place. 

Sect. 6. 3. In other relations we may have. — Thirdly, as to the relation 
of modes, mathematicians have framed many axioms concerning that one re- 
lation of equality. As, equals taken from equals, the remainder will be equal ; 
which, with the rest of that kind, however they are received for maxims by 
the mathematicians, and are unquestionable truths ; yet, I think, that any one 
who considers them, will not find that they have a clearer self-evidence than 
these, that one and one are equal to two, that if you take from the five fingers 
of one hand two, and from the five fingers of the other hand two, the remain- 
ing numbers will be equal. These and a thousand other such propositions 
may be found in numbers, which, at the very first hearing, force the assent, 
and carry with them an equal, if not greater clearness, than those mathema- 
tical axioms. 

Sect. 7. 4. Concerning real existence we have none. — Fourthly, as to 
real existence, since that has no connexion with any other of our ideas, but 
that of ourselves, and of a first being, we have in that, concerning the real 
existence of all other beings, not so much as demonstrative, much less a self- 
evident knowledge ; and therefore concerning those there are no maxims. 

Sect. 8. These axioms do not much influence our other knowledge. — In 
the next place let us consider what influence these received maxims have upon 
the other parts of our knowledge. The rules established in the schools, that 
all reasonings are ex prascognitis et prceconcessis, seem to lay the foundation 
of all other knowledge in these maxims, and to suppose them to be proecog- 
nita ■ whereby, I think, are meant these two things: first, that these axioms 



396 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

are those truths that are first known to the mind. And, secondly, that upon 
them the other parts of our knowledge depend. 

Sect. 9. Because they are not the truths we first knew. — First, that they 
are not the truths first known to the mind, is evident to experience, as we 
have shown in another place, book i. chap. ii. Who perceives not that a 
child certainly knows that a stranger is not its mother, that its sacking-bottle 
is not the rod, long before he knows that it is impossible for the same thing 
to be and not to be ] And how many truths are there about numbers, which it 
is obvious to observe that the mind is perfectly acquainted with, and fully con- 
vinced of, before it ever thought on these general maxims, to which mathema- 
ticians, in their arguings, do sometimes refer them ! Whereof the reason is 
very plain ; for that which makes the mind assent to such propositions being 
nothing else but the perception it has of the agreement or disagreement of its 
ideas, according as it finds them affirmed or denied one of another, in words 
it understands ; and every idea being known to be what it is, and every two 
distinct ideas being known not to be the same ; it must necessarily follow, that 
such self-evident truths must be first known, which consist of ideas that are 
first in the mind : and the ideas first in the mind, it is evident, are those of 
particular things, from whence, by slow degrees, the understanding proceeds 
to some few general ones ; which being taken from the ordinary and familiar 
objects of sense, are settled in the mind, with general names to them. Thus 
particular ideas are first received and distinguished, and so knowledge got 
about them ; and next to them, the less general or specific, which are next to 
particular : for abstract ideas are not so obvious or easy to children, or the 
yet unexercised mind, as particular ones. If they seem so to grown men, it 
is only because by constant and familiar use they are made so. For when we 
nicely reflect upon them, we shall find, that general ideas are fictions and con- 
trivances of the mind, that carry difficulty with them, and do not so easily offer 
themselves as we are apt to imagine. For example, does it not require some 
pains and skill to form the general idea of a triangle (winch is yet none of the 
most abstract, comprehensive, and difficult)'? for it must be neither oblique 
nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon ; but all and none 
of these at once. In effect, it is something imperfect, that cannot exist ; an 
idea wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent ideas are put 
together. It is true, the mind, in this imperfect state, has need of such ideas, 
and makes all the haste to them it can, for the conveniency of communication 
and enlargement of knowledge ; to both which it is naturally very much in- 
clined. But yet one has reason to suspect such ideas are marks of our im- 
perfection ; at least this is enough to show, that the most abstract and general 
ideas are not those that the mind is first and most easily acquainted with, not 
such as its earliest knowledge is conversant about. 

Sect. 10. Because on them the other parts of our knowledge do not de- 
fend. — Secondly, from what has been said, it plainly follows, that these mag- 
nified maxims are not the principles and foundations of all our other know- 
ledge. For, if there be a great many other truths, which have as much self- 
evidence as they, and a great many that we know before them, it is impossible 
they should be the principles from which we deduce all other truths. Is it im- 
possible to know that one and two are equal to three, but by virtue of this or 
some such axiom, viz. the whole is equal to all its parts taken together] Many 
a one knows that one and two are equal to three, without having heard or 
thought on that, or any other axiom, by which it might be proved: and knows 
it as certainly as any other man knows that the whole is equal to all its parts, 
or any other maxim, and all from the same reason of self-evidence ; the 
equality of those ideas being as visible and certain to him without that, ot 
any other axiom, as with it, it needing no proof to make it perceived. Nor 
after the knowledge, that the whole is equal to all its parts, does lie know 
that one and two are equal to three, better or more certainly than he did be- 
fore. For if there be any odds in those ideas, the whole and parts are more 
obscure, or at least more difficult to be settled in the mind, than those of one* 



Ch. 7. MAXIMS. 39? 

two, and three. And indeed, I think, I may ask these men, who will needs 
have all knowledge, besides those general principles themselves, to depend 
on general, innate, and self-evident principles, what principle is requisite to 
prove, that one and one are two, that two and two are four, that three time*, 
two are six] Which being known without any proof do evince, that either 
all knowledge does not depend on certain prcecognita, or general maxims 
called principles, or else that these are principles ; that if these are to be 
counted principles, a great part of numeration will be so. To which if we 
add all the self-evident propositions,, which may be made about all our distinct 
ideas, principles will be almost infinite, at least, innumerable, which men ar- 
rive to the knowledge of at different ages : and a great many of these innate 
principles they never come to know all their lives. But whether they come 
in view of the mind earlier or later, this is true of them, that they are all known 
by their native evidence, are wholly independent, receive no light, nor are 
capable of any proof one from another; much less the more particular from 
the more general; or the more simple from the more compounded: the more 
simple and less abstract being the most familiar, and the easier and earlier ap- 
prehended. But which ever be the clearest ideas, the evidence and certainty 
of allsuch propositions is in this, that a man sees the same idea to be the 
same idea, and infallibly perceives two different ideas to be different ideas. 
For when a man has in his understanding the ideas of one and of two, the 
idea of yellow, and the idea of blue, he cannot but certainly know, that the 
idea of one is the idea of one, and not the idea of two ; and that the idea of 
yellow is the idea of yellow, and not the idea of blue. For a man cannot con- 
found the ideas in his mind, which he has distinct : that would be to have them 
confused and distinct at the same time, which is a contradiction : and to have 
none distinct is to have no use of our faculties, to have no knowledge at all. 
And therefore what idea soever is affirmed of itself, or whatsoever two entire 
distinct ideas are denied one of another, the mind cannot but assent to such a 
proposition, as infallibly true, as soon as it understands the terms, without 
hesitation or need of proof, or regarding those made in more general terms, 
and called maxims. 

Sect. 11. What use these general maxims have. — What shall we then 
say] Are these general maxims of no use] By no means, though perhaps 
their use is not that which it is commonly taken to be. But since doubting 
in the least of what hath been by some men ascribed to these maxims may be 
apt to be cried out against, as overturning the foundations of all the sciences ; 
it may be worth while to consider them, with respect to other parts of our 
knowledge, and examine more particularly to what purposes they serve, and 
to what not. 

1. It is evident from what has been already said, that they are of no usetc 
prove or confirm less general self-evident propositions. 

2. It is as plain that they are not, nor have been, the foundations whereon 
any science hath been built. There is, I know, a great deal of talk, propa- 
gated from scholastic men, of sciences and the maxims on which they are 
built : but it has been my ill luck never to meet with any such sciences ; 
much less any one built upon these two maxims, what is, is ; and it is im- 
possible for the same thing to be and not to be. And I would be glad to be 
shown where any such science, erected upon these or any other general 
axioms, is to be found : and should be obliged to any one who would lay be- 
fore me the frame and system of any science so built on these or any such 
like maxims, that could not be shown to stand as firm without any considera- 
tion of them. I ask, whether these general maxims have not the same use in 
the study of divinity, and in theological questions, that they have in other 
sciences - They serve here too to silence wranglers, and put an end to dispute. 
But I think that nobody will therefore say, that the Christian religion is built 
upon these maxims, or that the knowledge we have of it is derived from these prin- 
ciples. It is from revelation we have received it, and without revelation these 
maxims had never been »ble to help us to it. When we find out an idea, bv 



398 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

whose intervention we discover the connexion of two others, this is a revelation 
from God to us, by the voice of reason. For w r e then come to know T a truth 
that we did not know before. When God declares any truth to us, this is a 
revelation to us by the voice of his Spirit, and we are advanced in our know- 
ledge. But in neither of these do we receive our light or knowledge from 
maxims. But in the one, the # things themselves afford it, and we see the truth 
in them by perceiving their agreement or disagreement : in the other, God 
himself affords it immediately to us, and we see the truth of what he says in 
>i:s unerring veracity. 

3. They are not of use to help men forward in the advancement of sciences, 
or new discoveries of yet unknown truths. Mr Newton, in his never enough 
to be admired book, has demonstrated several propositions, which are so many 
new truths, before unknown to the world, and are farther advances in matho 
matical knowledge; but, for the discovery of these, it was not the general 
vnaxims, what is, is ; or, the whole is bigger than a part ; or the like, that helped 
him. These were not the clues that led him into the discovery of the truth 
and certainty of those propositions. Nor was it by them that he got the know 
ledge of those demonstrations; but by finding out intermediate ideas, that 
showed the agreement or disagreement of the ideas, as expressed in the pro 
positions he demonstrated. This is the greatest exercise and improvement 
of human understanding in the enlarging- of knowledge, and advancing the 
sciences ; wherein they are far enough from receiving- any help from the con- 
templation of these, or the like magnified maxims. Would those who have 
this traditional admiration of these propositions, that they think no step can 
be made in knowledge without the support of an axiom, no stone laid in the 
building of the sciences without a general maxim, but distinguish between 
the method of acquiring knowledge, and of communicating ; between the 
method of raising any science, and that of teaching it to others as far as it is 
advanced : they would see that those general maxims were not the foundations 
on which the first discoverers raised their admirable structures, nor the keys 
that unlocked and opened those secrets of knowledge. Though afterward, 
when schools were erected, and sciences had their professors to teach what 
others had found out, they often made use of maxims, i. e. laid down certain 
propositions which were self-evident, or to be received for true ; which being 
settled in the minds of their scholars, as unquestionable verities, they on oc- 
casion made use of, to convince them of truths in particular instances, that 
were not so familiar to their minds as those general axioms which had before 
been inculcated to them, and carefully settled in their minds. Though these 
particular instances, when well reflected on, are no less self-evident to the 
understanding than the general maxims brought to confirm them ; and it was 
in those particular instances that the first discoverer found the truth, without 
the help of the general maxims : and so may any one else do, who with atten- 
tion considers them. 

To come therefore to the use that is made of maxims. 

1. They are of use, as has been observed, in the ordinary methods of teach- 
ing sciences as far as they are advanced; but of little or none in advancing 
them farther. 

2. They are of use in disputes, for the silencing of obstinate wranglers, and 
bringing those contests to some conclusion. Whether a need of them to that 
end came not in, in the manner following, I crave leave to inquire. The 
schools having made disputation the touchstone of men's abilities, and the 
criterion of knowledge, adjudged victory to him that kept the field : and he 
that had the last word was concluded to have the better of the argument, if 
not of the cause. But because by this means there was like to be no decision 
between skilful combatants, whilst one never failed of a medius terminus to 
prove any proposition ; and the other could as constantly, without or with a 
distinction, deny the major or minor ; to prevent, as much as could be, run- 
lung out of disputes into an endless train of syllogisms, certain general pro- 
positions^ most of them indeed self-evident, were introduced into the schools- 



Ch. 7. MAXIMS. 309 

which being such, as all men allowed and agreed in, were looked on as general 
measures of truth, and served instead of principles (where the disputants had 
not laid down any other between them) beyond which there was no going, and 
which must not be receded from by either side. And thus these maxims get- 
ting the name of principles, beyond which men in dispute could not retreat, 
u ere by mistake taken to be originals and sources, from whence all know- 
ledge began, and the foundation whereon the sciences were built. Because 
when in their disputes they came to any of these, they stopped there, and 
went no farther ; the matter was determined. But how much this is a mistake 
hath been already shown. 

This method of the schools, which have been thought the fountains of know- 
ledge, introduced, as I suppose, the, like use of these maxims into a great part 
of conversation out of the schools, to stop the mouths of cavillers, whom any 
one is excused from arguing any longer with, when they deny these general 
self-evident principles received by all reasonable men, who have once thought 
of them : but yet their use herein is but to put an end to wrangling. They, 
in truth, when urged in such cases, teach nothing : that is already done by 
the intermediate ideas made use of in the debate, whose connexion may be 
seen without the help of those maxims, and so the truth known before the 
maxim is produced, and the argument brought to a first principle. Men would 
give off a wrong argument before it came to that, if in their disputes they 
proposed to themselves the finding and embracing of truth, and not a contest 
for victory. And thus maxims have their use to put a stop to their perverse- 
ness, whose ingenuity should have yielded sooner. But the method of the 
schools having allowed and encouraged men to oppose and resist evident truth 
till they are baffled, i. e. till they are reduced to contradict themselves or some 
established principle ; it is no wonder that they should not in civil conversa- 
tion be ashamed of that, which in the schools is counted a virtue and a glory ; 
obstinately to maintain that side of the question they have chosen, whether 
true or false, to the last extremity, even after conviction : a strange way to 
attain truth and knowledge, and that, which I think the rational part of man- 
kind, not corrupted by education, could scarce believe should ever be admitted 
among the lovers of truth, and the students of religion or nature, or intro- 
duced into the seminaries of those who are to propagate the truths of religion 
or philosophy among the ignorant and unconvinced. How much such a way 
of learning is like to return young men's minds from the sincere search and 
love of truth, nay, and to make them doubt whether there is any such thing, 
or at least worth the adhering to, I shall not now inquire. This I think, that 
bating those places which brought the peripatetic philosophy into their schools, 
where it continued many ages, without teaching the world any thing but the 
art of wrangling; these maxims were nowhere thought the foundations on 
which the sciences were built, nor the great helps to the advancement of 
knowledge. 

As to these general maxims, therefore, they are, as I have said, of great use 
in disputes, to stop the mouths of wranglers : but not of much use to the dis- 
covery of unknown truths, or to help the mind forward in its search after 
knowledge. For who ever began to build his knowledge on this general pro- 
position, what is, is ; or, it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to 
be : and from either of these, as from a principle of science, deduced a system 
of useful knowledge 1 Wrong opinions often involving contradictions, one 
of these maxims, as a touchstone, may serve well to show whither they lead. 
But yet, however fit to lay open the absurdity or mistake of a man's reason- 
ing or opinion, they are of very little use for enlightening the understanding : 
and it will not be found, that the mind receives much help from them in its pro- 
gress in knowledge ; which would be neither less, nor less certain, were these 
two general propositions never thought on. It is true, as I have said, they 
sometimes serve in argumentation to stop a wrangler's mouth, by showing 
the absurdity of what he saith, and by exposing him to the shame of contradict- 
ing what all the world knows, and he himself cannot but own to be true. 



400 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

But it is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put 
him in possession of truth; and I would fain know what truths these two 
propositions are able to teach, and by their influence make us know, which we 
did not know before, or could not know without them. Let us reason from 
them as well as we can, they are only about identical predications ; and in- 
fluence, if any at all, none but such. Each particular proposition concerning 
identity or diversity is as clearly and certainly known in itself, if attended 
to, as either of these general ones : only these general ones, as serving in all 
cases, are therefore more inculcated and insisted on. As to other less general 
maxims, many of them are no more than bare verbal propositions, and teach 
uii nothing but the respect and import of names one to another. " The whole 
is equal to all its parts ;" what real truth,* I beseech you, does it teach us ) 
What more is contained in that maxim than what the signification of the 
word totum, or the whole, does of itself import] And he that knows that the 
word whole stands for what is made up of all its parts, knows very little less 
than that the whole is equal to all its parts. And upon the same ground, I 
think that this proposition, a hill is higher than a valley, and several the like, 
may also pass for maxims. But yet masters of mathematics, when they 
would, as teachers of what they know, initiate others in that science, do not 
without reason place this, and some other such maxims, at the entrance of 
their systems ; that their scholars, having in the beginning perfectly acquaint- 
ed their thoughts with these propositions made in such general terms, may be 
used to make such reflections, and have these more general propositions, as 
formed rules and sayings, ready to apply to all particular cases. Not that, if 
they be equally weighed, they are more clear and evident than the particular 
instances they are brought to confirm : but that, being more familiar to the 
mind, the very naming them is enough to satisfy the understanding. But this, 
I say, is more from our custom of using them, and the establishment they 
have got in our minds, by our often thinking of them, than from the different 
evidence of the things. But before custom has settled methods of think- 
ing and reasoning in our minds, I am apt to imagine it is quite otherwise ; and 
that the child, when a part of his apple is taken away, knows it better in that 
particular instance than by this general proposition, the whole is equal to all 
its parts ; and that if one of these have need to be confirmed to him by the 
other, the general has more need to be let into his mind by the particular, 
than the particular by the general. For in particulars our knowledge begins, 
and so spreads itself by degrees to generals. Though afterward the mind 
takes the quite contrary course, and having drawn its knowledge into as ge- 
neral propositions as it can, makes those familiar to its thoughts, and accus- 
toms itself to have recourse to them, as to the standards of truth and falsehood. 
By which familiar use of them, as rules to measure the truth of other propo- 
sitions, it comes in time to be thought, that more particular propositions have 
their truth and evidence from their conformity to these more general ones, 
which in discourse and argumentation are so frequently urged, and constantly 
admitted. And this I think to be the reason why, among so many self-evident 
propositions, the most general only have had the title of maxims. 

Sect. 12. Maxims, if care be not taken in the use of words, may prove 
contradictions. — One thing farther, I think, it may not be amiss to observe 
concerning these general maxims, that they are so far from improving or 
establishing our minds in true knowledge, that if our notions be wrong, loose, 
and unsteady, and we resign up our thoughts to the sounds of words, rather 
than fix them on settled determinate ideas of things ; I say, these general 
maxims will serve to conform us in mistakes; and in such a way of use of 
words, which is most common, will serve to prove contradictions; v. g. he 
that, with Des Cartes, shall frame in his mind an idea of what he calls body 
to be nothing but extension, may easily demonstrate that there is no vacuum, 
i. e. no space void of body, by this maxim, what is, is. For the idea to which 
he annexes the name body being bare extension, his knowledge, that space 
cannot be without body, is certain. For he knows his own idea of extension 



Ch. 7. MAXIMS. 401 

clearly and distinctly, and knows that it is what it is, and not another idea 
though it be called by these three names, extension, body, space. Which 
three words, standing for one and the same idea, may no doubt, with the same 
evidence and certainty, be affirmed one of another, as each of itself : and it is 
as certain, that whilst I use them all to stand for one and the same idea, this 
predication is as true and identical in its signification, that space is body, as 
this predication is true and identical, that body is body, both in signification 
and sound. 

Sect. 13. Instance in vacuum. — Cut if another should come, and make to 
himself another idea, different from Des Cartes's, of the thing, which yet, 
with Des Cartes, he calls by the same name body ; and make his idea, which 
he expresses by the word body, to be of a thing that hath both extension and 
solidity together; he will as easily demonstrate that there may be a vacuum 
or space without a body, as Des Cartes demonstrated the contrary. Because 
the idea to which he gives the name space being barely the simple one of ex- 
tension ; and the idea to which he gives the name body being the complex idea 
of extension and resistibility, or solidity, together in the same subject ; these 
two ideas are not exactly one and the same, but in the understanding as dis- 
tinct as the ideas of one and two, white and black, or as of corporiety and 
humanity, if I may use those barbarous terms : and therefore the predication 
of them in our minds, or in words standing for them, is not identical, but the 
negation of them one of another, viz. this proposition, extension or space is 
not body, is as true and evidently certain, as this maxim, it is impossible for 
the same thing to be, and not to be, can make any proposition. 

Sect. 14. They prove not the existence of things without us. — But yet, 
though both these propositions (as you see) may be equally demonstrated, viz. 
that there may be a vacuum, and that there cannot be a vacuum, by these two 
certain principles, viz. what is, is ; and the same thing cannot be, and not be ; 
yet neither of these principles will serve to prove to us, that any, or what bo- 
dies do exist ; for what we are left to our senses, to discover to us as far as 
they can. Those universal and self-evident principles, being only our con- 
stant, clear, and distinct knowledge of our own ideas, more general or com- 
prehensive, can assure us of nothing that passes without the mind ; their cer- 
tainty is founded only upon the knowledge we have of each idea by itself, and of 
its distinction from others ; about which we cannot be mistaken whilst they are 
in our minds, though we may be, and often are mistaken when we retain the 
names without the ideas; or use them confusedly, sometimes for one, and 
sometimes for another idea. In which cases the force of these axioms reach- 
ing only to the sound, and not the signification of the words, serves only to 
lead us into confusion, mistake, and error. It is to show men that these 
maxims, however cried up for the great guards of truth, will not secure them 
from error in a careless loose use of their words, that I have made this re- 
mark. In all that is here suggested concerning their little use for the improve- 
ment of knowledge, or dangerous use in undetermined ideas, I have been far 
enough from saying or intending they should be laid aside, as some have been 
too forward to charge me. I affirm them to be truths, self-evident truths ; 
and so cannot be laid aside. As far as their influence will reach, it is in vain 
to endeavour, nor will I attempt to abridge it. But yet, without any injury 
to truth or knowledge, I may have reason to think their use is not answerable 
to the great stress which seems to be laid on them ; and I may warn men not 
to make an ill use of them, for the confirming themselves in errors. 

Sect. 15. Their application dangerous about complex ideas. — But let 
them be of what use they will in verbal propositions they cannot discover or 
prove to us the least knowledge of the nature of substances, as they are found 
and exist without us, any farther than grounded on experience. And though 
the consequence of these two propositions, called principles, be very clear, 
and their use not dangerous or hurtful, in the probation of such things where- 
in there is no need at all of them for proof, but such as are clear by them- 
selves without them, viz. where our ideas are determined, and known by the 
3 A 



402 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

names that stand for them: yet when these principles, viz. what is, is ; and 
t. is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be ; are made use of in 
the probation of propositions, wherein are words standing for complex ideas; 
v. g. man, horse, gold, virtue; there they are of infinite danger, and most 
commonly make men receive and retain falsehood for manifest truth, and un- 
certainty for demonstration : upon which follow error, obstinacy, and all the 
mischiefs that can happen from wrong reasoning. The reason whereof is 
not that these principles are less true, or of less force in proving propositions 
made of terms standing for complex ideas ; than where the propositions are 
about simple ideas ; but because men mistake generally, thinking that where 
ihe same terms are preserved, the propositions are about the same things, 
though the ideas they stand for are in truth different : therefore these maxims 
are made use of to support those, which in sound and appearance are contra- 
dictory propositions ; as is clear in the demonstrations above mentioned about 
a vacuum. So that whilst men take words for things, as usually they do, 
these maxims may and do commonly serve to prove contradictory proposi- 
tions : as shall yet be farther made manifest. 

Sect. 16. Instance in man. — For instance, let man be that concerning 
which you would by these first principles demonstrate any thing, and we shall 
see, that so far as demonstration is by these principles, it is only verbal, and 
gives us no certain universal true proposition or knowledge of any being 
existing without us. First, a child having framed the idea of a man, it is 
probable that his idea is just like that picture, which the painter makes of the 
visible appearances joined together; and such a complication of ideas to- 
gether in his understanding makes up the simple complex idea which he calls 
man, whereof white or flesh-colour in England being one, the child can de- 
monstrate to you that a negro is not a man, because white colour was one of 
the constant simple ideas of the complex idea he calls man : and therefore he 
can demonstrate by the principle, it is impossible for the same thing to be, 
and not to be, that a negro is not a man ; the foundation of his certainty be- 
ing not that universal proposition, which perhaps he never heard nor thought 
of, but the clear distinct perception he hath of his own simple ideas of black 
and white, which he cannot be persuaded to take, nor can ever mistake one 
for another, whether he knows that maxim or no : and to this child, or any 
one who hath such an idea, which he calls man, can you never demonstrate 
that a man hath a soul, because his idea of man includes no such notion or 
idea in it. And therefore, to him, the principle of what is, is, proves not 
this matter; but it depends upon collection and observation, by which he is 
to make his complex idea called man. 

Sect. 17. Secondly, another that hath gone farther in framing and col- 
lecting the idea he calls man, and to the outward shape adds laughter and 
rational discourse, may demonstrate that infants and changelings are no men, 
by this maxim, it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be ; and 1 
have discoursed with very rational men, who have actually denied that they 
are men. 

Sect. 18. Thirdly, perhaps another makes up the complex idea which he 
calls man only out of the ideas of body in general, and the powers of lan- 
guage and reason, and leaves out the shape wholly : this man is able to de- 
monstrate, that a man may have no hands, but be quadrupeds, neither o'. 
those being included in his idea of man ; and in whatever body or shape he 
found speech and reason joined, that was a man : because having a clear 
knowledge of such a complex idea, it is certain that what is, is. 

Sect. 19. Little use of these maxims in proofs where we have clear and 
distinct ideas. — So that, if rightly considered, I think we may say, that where 
our ideas are determined in our minds, and have annexed to them by us 
known and steady names under those settled determinations, there is little 
fieed or no use at all of these maxims, to prove the agreement or disagree- 
menc cf any of them. He that cannot discern the truth or falsehood of such 
propositions, without the help of these and the like maxims, will not be helped 



Ch. 7. MAXIMS. 403 

by these maxims to do it ; since he cannot be supposed to know the truth of 
these maxims themselves without proof, if he cannot know the truth of others 
without proof, which are as self-evident as these. Upon this ground it is, that 
intuitive knowledge neither requires nor admits any proof, one part of it more 
than another. He that will suppose it does, takes away the foundation of all 
knowledge and certainty : and he that needs any proof to make him certain, 
and give his assent to this proposition, that two are equal to two, will also 
have need of a proof to make him admit, that what is, is. He that needs a 
probation to convince him, that two are not three, that white is not black, 
that a triangle is not a circle, &c. or any other two determined distinct ideaa 
are not one and the same, will need also a demonstration to convince him, 
that it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not to be. 

Sect. 20. Their use dangerous where our ideas are confused. — And 
as these maxims are of little use where we have determined ideas, so they 
are, as I have shown, of dangerous use where our ideas are not determined ; 
and where we use words that are not annexed to determined ideas, but such 
as are of a loose and wandering signification, sometimes standing for one, and 
sometimes for another idea; from which follow mistake and error, which these 
maxims (brought as proofs to establish propositions, wherein the terms stand 
for undetermined ideas) do by their authority confirm and rivet. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OF TRIFLING PROPOSITIONS. 

Sect. 1. Some propositions bring no increase to our knowledge. — 
Whether the maxims treated of in the foregoing chapter be of that use to real 
knowledge as is generally supposed, I leave to be considered. This, I think, 
may confidently be affirmed, that there are universal propositions, which 
though they be certainly true, yet they add no light to our understandings, 
bring no increase to our knowledge. Such are, 

Sect. 2. As, first, identical propositions. — First, all purely identical pro- 
positions. These obviously, and at first blush, appear to contain no instruc- 
tion in them. For when we affirm the said term of itself, whether it be barely 
verbal, or whether it contains any clear and real idea, it shows us nothmgbut 
what we must certainly know before, whether such a proposition be either 
made by or proposed to us. Indeed, that most general one, what is, is, may 
serve sometimes to show a man the absurdity he is guilty of, when by circum- 
locution, or equivocal terms, he would, in particular instances, deny the same 
thing of itself; because nobody will so openly bid defiance to common sense, 
as to affirm visible and direct contradictions in plain words ; or if he does, a 
man is excused if he breaks off any farther discourse with him. But yet, I 
think I may say, that neither that received maxim, nor any other identical 
proposition teaches us any thing: and though in such kind of propositions 
this great and magnified maxim, boasted to be the foundation of demonstra- 
tion, may be and often is made use of to confirm them ; yet all it proves 
amounts to no more than this, that the same word may with great certainty 
be affirmed of itself, without any doubt of the truth of any such proposition ; 
and let me add also, without any real knowledge. 

Sect. 3. For at this rate, any very ignorant person, who can but make a 
proposition, and knows what he means when he-says aye or no, may make a 
million of propositions, of whose truths he may be infallibly certain, and yet 
not know one thing in the world thereby; v. g. what is a soul, is a soul; or 
a soul is a soul; a spirit is a spirit; a fetiche is a fetiche, &c These all 
being equivalent to this proposition, viz. what is, is, i. e. what hath existence, 
hath existence; or who hath a soul, hath a soul. What is this more than 
:rifling with words ] It is but like a monkey shifting his oyster from one 



404 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

hand to ie otner ; and had he but words, might, no doubt, have said, " oyster 
in right hand is subject, and oyster in left hand is predicate :" and so might 
have made a self-evident proposition of oyster, i. e. oyster is oyster ; and yet, 
with all this, not have been one whit the wiser or more knowing : and that 
way of handling the matter would much at once have satisfied the monkey's 
hunger, or a man's understanding ; and they would have improved in know- 
ledge and bulk together. 

I know there are some who, because identical propositions are self-evident, 
show a great concern for them, and think they do great service to philosophy 
by crying them up, as if in them was contained all knowledge, and the 
understanding were led into all truth by them only. I grant as forwardly as 
any one, that they are all true and self-evident. I grant farther, that the 
foundation of all our knowledge lies in the faculty we have of perceiving the 
same idea to be the same, and of discerning it from those that are different, 
as I have shown in the foregoing chapter. But how that vindicates the 
making use of identical propositions, for the improvement of knowledge, from 
the imputation of trifling, I do not see. Let any one repeat, as often as he 
pleases, that the will is the will, or lay what stress on it he thinks fit ; of 
what use is this, and an infinite the like propositions, for the enlarging our 
knowledge ] Let a man abound, as much as the plenty of words which he 
has will permit, in such propositions as these ; a law is a law, and obligation 
is obligation ; right is right, and wrong is wrong : will these and the like ever 
help him to an acquaintance with ethics ] or instruct him or others in the 
knowledge of morality'? Those who know not, nor perhaps ever will know, 
what is right and what is wrong, nor the measures of them, can with as much 
assurance make, and infallibly know the truth of these and all such proposi- 
tions, as he that is best instructed in morality can do. But what advance do 
such propositions give in the knowledge of any thing necessary or useful for 
their conduct 1 

He would be thought to do little less than trifle, who, for the enlightening 
the understanding in any part of knowledge, should be busy with identical 
propositions, and insist on such maxims as these : substance is substance, and 
body is body ; a vacuum is a vacuum, and a vortex is a vortex ; a centaur is a 
centaur, and a chimera is a chimera, &c For these, and all such are equally 
true, equally certain, and equally self-evident. But yet they cannot but be 
counted trifling, when made use of as principles of instruction, and stress laid 
on them, as helps to knowledge: since they teach nothing but what every 
one, who is capable of discourse, knows, without being told ; viz. that the 
same term is the same term, and the same idea the same idea. And upon 
this account it was that I formerly did, and do still think, the offering and in- 
culcating such propositions, in order to give the understanding any new light 
or inlet into the knowledge of things, no better than trifling. 

Instruction lies in something very different ; and he that would enlarge his 
own, or another's mind, to truth he does not yet know, must find out inter- 
mediate ideas, and then lay them in such order one by another, that the 
understanding may see the agreement or disagreement of those in question. 
Propositions that do this are instructive ; but they are far from such as affirm 
the same term of itself: which is noway to advance one's self or others in any 
sort of knowledge. It no more helps to that, than it would help any one in 
his learning to read, to have such propositions as these inculcated to him. 
An A is an A, and a B is a B, which a man may know as well as any school- 
master, and yet never be able to read a word as long as he lives. Nor do 
these, or any such identical propositions, help him one jot forward in the skill 
of reading, let him make what use of them he can. 

If those who blame my calling them trifling propositions had but read, and 
been at the pains to understand, what I had above writ in very plain English, 
they could not but have seen that by identical propositions I mean only such, 
wherein the same term, importing the same idea, is affirmed of itself: which 
I take to be the proper signification of identical propositions: and concerning 



Cb 9. TRIFLING PROPOSITIONS. 405 

all such, I think I may continue safely to say, that to propose them as instruc- 
tive is no better than trifling. For no one who has the use of reason can 
miss them, where it is necessary they should be taken notice of: nor doubt of 
their truth, when he does take notice of them. 

But if men will call propositions identical, wherein the same term is not 
affirmed of itself, whether they speak more properly than I, others must judge ; 
this is certain, all that they say of propositions that are not identical in my 
sense, concerns not me, nor what I have said ; all that I have said relating to 
those propositions wherein the same term is affirmed of itself. And I would 
fain see an instance, wherein any such can be made use of, to the advantage 
and improvement of any one's knowledge. Instances of other kinds, what- 
ever use may be made of them, concern not me, as not being such as I call 
identical. 

Sect. 4. Secondly, when a part of any complex idea is predicated of the 
whole. — Secondly, another sort of trifling propositions is, when a part of the 
complex idea is predicated of the name of the whole ; a part of the definition 
of the word defined. Such are all propositions wherein the genus is predi- 
cated of the species, or more comprehensive of less comprehensive terms : for 
what information, what knowledge carries this proposition in it, viz. lead is 
a metal, to a man who knows the complex idea the name lead stands for? all 
the simple ideas that go to the complex one signified by the term metal, being 
nothing but what he before comprehended, and signified by the name lead. 
Indeed, to a man that knows the signification of the word metal, and not of 
the word lead, it is a shorter way to explain the signification of the word lead, 
by saying it is a metal, which at once expresses several of its simple ideas, 
than to enumerate them one by one, telling him it is a body very heavy, fusi- 
ble, and malleable. 

Sect. 5. As part of the definition of the term defined. — Alike trifling it 
is, to predicate any other part of the definition of the term defined, or to affirm 
any one of the simple ideas of a complex one of the name of the whole com- 
plex idea; as, all gold is fusible. For fusibility being one of the simple ideas 
that goes to the making up the complex one the sound gold stands for, what 
can it be but playing with sounds, to affirm that of the name gold, which is 
comprehended in its received signification ? It would be thought little better 
than ridiculous, to affirm gravely as a truth of moment, that gold is yellow ; 
and I see not how it is any jot more material to say, it is fusible, unless that 
quality be left out of the complex idea, of which the sound gold is the mark 
in ordinary speech. What instruction can it carry with it to tell one that 
which he hath been told already, or he is supposed to know before'? For 1 
am supposed to know the signification of the word another uses to me, or else 
he is to tell me. And if I know that the name gold stands for this complex 
idea of body, yellow, heavy, fusible, malleable, it will not much instruct me to 
put it solemnly afterward in a proposition, and gravely say, all gold is fusible 
Such propositions can only serve to show the disingenuity of one, who will gc 
from the definition of his own terms, by reminding him sometimes of it ; but 
carry no knowledge with them, but of the signification of words, however 
certain they be. 

Sect. 6. Instance, man and palfrey. — Every man is an animal, or living 
body, is as certain a proposition as can be; but no more conducing to the 
knowledge of things, than to say, a palfrey is an ambling horse, or a neighing 
ambling animal, both being only about the signification of words, and make 
me know but this; that body, sense, and motion, or power of sensation and 
moving, are three of those ideas that I always comprehend and signify by the 
word man: and where they are not to be found together, the name man be- 
longs not to that thing : and so of the other, that body, sense, and a certai.i 
way of going, with a certain kind of voice, are some of those ideas which I 
always comprehend and signify by the word palfrey; and when they are not 
to be found together, the name palfrey belongs not to that thing. It is just 
the same, and to the same purpose, when any term standing for any one or 



406 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

more of the simple ideas, that all together make up that complex idea which 
is called man, is affirmed of the term man: v. g. suppose a Roman signified 
by the word homo all these distinct ideas united in one subject, " corporietas, 
sensibilitas, potentia se movendi, rationalitas, visibilitas;" he might, no 
doubt, with great certainty, universally affirm, one, more, or all of these to- 
gether of the word homo, but did no more than say that the word homo, in 
his country, comprehended in its signification all these ideas. Much like a 
romance knight who by the word palfrey signified these ideas ; body of a 
certain figure, four-legged, with sense, motion, ambling, neighing, white, used 
to have a woman on his back: might with the same certainty universally 
affirm also any or all of these of the word palfrey ; but did thereby teach no 
more, but that the word palfrey, in his or romance language, stood for all 
these, and was not to be applied to any thing where any of these were want- 
ing. But he that shall tell me, that in whatever thing sense, motion, reason, 
and laughter, were united, that thing had actually a notion of God, or would 
be cast into a sleep by opium, made indeed an instructive proposition ; be- 
cause neither having the notion of God, nor being cast into sleep by opium, 
being contained in the idea signified by the word man, we are by such propo- 
sitions taught something more than barely what the word man stands for ; 
and therefore the knowledge contained in it is more than verbal. 

Sect. 7. For this teaches but the signification of words. — Before a man 
makes any proposition, he is supposed to understand the terms he uses in it, 
or else he talks like a parrot, only making a noise by imitation, and framing 
certain sounds, which he has learnt of others ; but not as a rational creature, 
using them for signs of ideas which he has in his mind. The hearer also is 
supposed to understand the terms as the speaker uses them, or else he talks 
jargon, and makes an unintelligible noise. And therefore he trifles with words 
who makes such a proposition, which, when it is made, contains no more 
than one of the terms does, and which a man was supposed to know before ; 
v. g. a triangle hath three sides, or saffron is yellow. And this is no farther 
tolerable, than where a man goes to explain his terms to one who is supposed 
or declares himself not to understand him : and then it teaches only the sig- 
nification of that word, and the use of that sign. 

Sect. 8. But no real knowledge. — We can know then the truth of two 
sorts of propositions with perfect certainty ; the one is, of those trifling pro- 
positions which have a certainty in them, but it is only a verbal certainty, but 
not instructive. And, secondly, we can know the truth, and so may be cer- 
tain in propositions, which affirm something of another, which is a necessary 
consequence of its precise complex idea, but not contained in it ; as that the 
external angle of all triangles is bigger than either of the opposite internal 
angles ; which relation of the outward angle to either of the opposite internal 
angles making no part of the complex idea signified by the name triangle, this 
is a real truth, and conveys with it instructive real knowledge. 

Sect. 9. General propositions concerning substances are often trifling. 
— We have little or no knowledge of what combinations there be of simple 
ideas existing together in substances, but by our senses, we cannot make any 
universal certain propositions concerning them, any farther than our nominal 
essences lead us : which being to a very few and inconsiderable truths, in 
respect of those which depend on their real constitutions, the general pro- 
positions that are made about substances, if they are certain, are for the most 
part but trifling; and if they are instructive, are uncertain, and such as 
we can have no knowledge of their real truth, how much soever constant 
observation and analogy may assist our judgment in guessing. Hence it 
comes to pass, that one may often meet with very clear and coherent dis- 
courses, that amount yet to nothing. For it is plain, that names of substan- 
tial beings, as well as others, as far as they have relative significations affixed 
to them, may, with great truth, be joined negatively and affirmatively in pro- 
positions, as their relative definitions make them fit to be so joined ; and 
propositions consisting of such terms, may, with the same clearness, be de- 



Ch. s. TRIFLING PROPOSITIONS. 407 

duced one from another, as those that convey the most real truths : and all 
this without any knowledge of the nature or reality of things existing with- 
out us.- By this method one may make demonstrations and undoubted pro- 
positions in words, and yet thereby advance not one jot in the knowledge of 
the truth of things ; v. g. he that having learnt these following words, with 
their ordinary mutually relative acceptations annexed to them : v. g. sub- 
stance, man, animal, form, soul, vegetative, sensitive, rational, may make 
several undoubted propositions about the soul, without knowing at all what 
the soul really is ; and of this sort, a man may find an infinite number of 
propositions, reasonings, and conclusions, in books of metaphysics, school 
divinity, and some sort of natural philosophy ; and, after all, know as little 
of God, spirits, or bodies, as he did before he set out. 

Sect. 10. And why. — He that hath liberty to define, i. e. to determine 
the signification of his names of substances (as certainly every one does in 
effect, who makes them stand for his own ideas) and makes their significa- 
tions at a venture, taking them for his own or other men's fancies, and not 
from an examination or inquiry into the nature of things themselves ; may, 
with little trouble, demonstrate them one of another, according to those sev- 
eral respects and mutual relations he has given them one to another ; wherein, 
however things agree or disagree in their own nature, he needs mind nothing 
but his own notions, with the names he hath bestowed upon them : but thereby 
no more increases his own knowledge, than he does his riches, who, taking 
a bag of counters, calls one in a certain phice a pound, another in another 
place a shilling, and a third in a third place a penny ; and so proceeding, 
may undoubtedly reckon right, and cast up a great sum, according to his 
counters so placed, and standing for more or less as he pleases, without being 
one jot the richer, or without even knowing how much a pound, shilling, 
or penny is, but only that one is contained in the other twenty times, and 
contains the other twelve : which a man may also do in the signification of 
words, by making them, in respect of one another, more, or less, or equally 
comprehensive. 

Sect. 11. Thirdly, using words variously is trifling with them. — Though 
yet concerning most words used in discourses, equally argumentative and 
controversial, there is this more to be complained of, which is the worst sort 
of trifling, and which sets us yet farther from the certainty of knowledge we 
hope to attain by them, or find in them ; viz. that most writers are so far 
from instructing us in the nature and knowledge of things, that they use 
their words loosely and uncertainly, and do not, by using them constantly 
and steadily in the same significations, make plain and clear deductions of 
words one from another, and make their discourses coherent and clear (how 
little soever they were instructive); which were not difficult to do, did they 
not find it convenient to shelter their ignorance or obstinacy under the ob- 
scurity and complexedness of their terms : to which, perhaps, inadvertency 
and ill custom do in many men much contribute. 

Sect. 12. Marks of verbal propositions. — To conclude ; barely verbal 
propositions may be known by these following marks : 

1. Predication in abstract. — First, all propositions, wherein two abstract 
terms are affirmed one of another, are barely about the signification of sounds. 
For since no abstract idea can be the same with any other but itself, when 
its abstract name is affirmed of any other term, it can signify no more but 
this, that it may or ought to be called by that name, or that these two name* 
signify the same idea. Thus, should any one say, that parsimony is frugality, 
that gratitude is justice, that this or that action is or is not temperate ; how- 
ever specious these and the like propositions may at first sight seem, yet 
when we come to press them, and examine nicely what they contain, we 
shall find that it all amounts to nothing but the signification of those terms. 

Sect. 13. 2. A part of the definition predicated of any term. — Sec- 
ondly, all propositions, wherein a part of the complex idea which any term 
stands for is predicated of that term, are only verbal : v. g. to say that gold 



403 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4 

is a metal, or heavy. And thus all propositions, wherein more comprehen 
sive words called genera are affirmed of subordinate or less comprehensive, 
called species, or individuals, are barely verbal. 

When by these two rules we have examined the propositions that make 
up the discourses we ordinarily meet with, both in and out of books, we shall, 
perhaps, find that a greater part of them, than is usually suspected, are purely 
about the signification of words, and contain nothing in them but the use and 
application of these signs. 

This, I think, I may lay down for an infallible rule, that wherever the dis- 
tinct idea any word stands for is not known and considered, and something 
not contained in the idea is not affirmed or denied of it ; there our thoughts 
stick wholly in sounds, and are able to attain no real truth or falsehood. 
This, perhaps, if well heeded, might save us a great deal of useless amuse- 
ment and dispute, and very much shorten our trouble and wandering, in the 
search of real and true knowledge. 



CHAPTER IX. 

OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXISTENCE. 

Sect. 1. General certain propositions concern not existence. — Hitherto 
we have only considered the essences of things, which being only abstract 
ideas, and thereby removed in our thoughts from particular existence (that 
being the proper operation of the mind, in abstraction, to consider an idea 
under no other existence, but what it has in the understanding) gives us no 
knowledge of real existence at all. Where by the way we may take notice, 
that universal propositions, of whose truth or falsehood we can have certain 
knowledge, concern not existence ; and farther, that all particular affirma- 
tions or negations, that would not be certain if they were made general, are 
only concerning existence ; they declaring only the accidental union or sepa- 
ration of ideas in things existing, which, in their abstract natures, have no 
known necessary union or repugnancy. 

Sect. 2. A threefold knowledge of existence. — But, leaving the nature of 
propositions and different ways of predication to be considered more at large 
in another place, let us now proceed to inquire concerning our knowledge of 
the existence of things, and how we come by it. I say then, that we have 
the knowledge of our own existence by intuition ; of the existence of Gcd 
by demonstration ; and of other things by sensation. 

Sect. 3. Our knowledge of our own existence is intuitive. — As for oi r 
own existence, we perceive it so plainly, and so certainly, that it neither 
needs nor is capable of any proof. For nothing can be more evident to us 
than our own existence ; I think, I reason, I feel pleasure and pain : can any 
of these be more evident to me than my own existence? If I doubt of all 
other things, that very doubt makes me perceive my own existence, and will 
not suffer me to doubt of that. For if I know I feel pain, it is evident I have 
as certain perception of my own existence, as of the existence of the pain I 
feel : or if I know I doubt, I have as certain perception of the existence of 
the thing doubting, as of that thought which I call doubt. Experience then 
convinces us that we have an intuitive knowljdge of our own existence, anii 
an internal infallible perception that we are. In every act of sensation, rea- 
soning, or thinking, we are conscious to ourselves of our own being ; and, in 
thus matter, come not short of the highest degree of certainty. 



Ch. 10 EXISTENCE OF A GOD. 409 

CHAPTER X. 

OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXISTENCE OF A GOD. 

Sect. 1. We are capable of knowing certainly that there is a God. — 
Though God has given us no innate ideas of himself ; though he has stamped 
no original characters on our minds, wherein we may read his being ; yet 
having furnished us with those faculties our minds are endowed with, he hath 
not left himself without witness : since we have sense, perception, and rea- 
son, and cannot want a clear proof of him, as long as we carry ourselves 
about us. Nor can we justly complain of our ignorance in this great point, 
since he has so plentifully provided us with the means to discover and know 
him, so far as is necessary to the end of our being, and the great concernment 
of our happiness. But though this be the most obvious truth that reason dis- 
covers ; and though its evidence be (if I mistake not) equal to mathematica, 
certainty ; yet it requires thought and attention, and the mind must apply 
itself to a regular deduction of it from some part of our intuitive knowledge ; 
or else we shall be as uncertain and ignorant of this as of other propositions 
which are in themselves capable of clear demonstration. To show therefore 
that we are capable of knowing, i. e. being certain that there is a God, anc 
how we may come by this certainty, I think we need go no farther than our- 
selves, and that undoubted knowledge we have of our own existence. 

Sect. 2. Man knows that he himself is. — I think it beyond question, that 
man has a clear idea of his own being ; he knows certainly that he exists,, 
and that he is something. He that can doubt, whether he be any thing or 
no, I speak not to, no more than I would argue with pure nothing, or endeav- 
our to convince nonentity that it were something. If any one pretends to 
be so sceptical as to deny his own existence (for really to doubt of it is mani- 
festly impossible), let him for me enjoy his beloved happiness of being 
nothing, until hunger, or some other pain, convince him of the contrary. 
This then, I think, I may take for a truth, which every one's certain know- 
ledge assures him of, beyond the liberty of doubting, viz. that he is something 
that actually exists. 

Sect. 3. He knows also that nothing cannot produce a being, therefore 
something eternal. — In the next place, man knows by an intuitive certainty, 
that bare nothing can no more produce any real being than it can be equa" 
to two right angles. If a man knows not that nonentity, or the absence of aL 
being, cannot be equal to two right angles, it is impossible he should know 
any demonstration in Euclid. If therefore we know there is some real being, 
and that nonentity cannot produce any real being, it is an evident demonstra- 
tion, that from eternity there has been something ; since what was not from 
eternity had a beginning ; and what had a beginning must be produced by 
something else. 

Sect. 4. That eternal being must be most powerful. — Next, it is evident, 
that what had its being and beginning from another, must also have all that 
which is in, and belongs to its being, from another too. All the powers it 
has must be owing to, and received from, the same source. This eternal 
source then of all being must also be the source and original of all power ; 
and so this eternal being must be also the most powerful. 

Sect. 5. And most knowing. — Again, a man finds in himself perceptior 
and Knowledge. We have then got one step farther ; and we are certair 
now, that there is not only some being, but some knowing intelligent being ir. 
the world. 

There was a time, then, when there was no knowing being, and when 
knowledge began to be ; or else there has been also a knowing being from 
eternity. If it be said, there was a time when no being had any knowledge, 
3 B 



410 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4 

when that eternal being was void of all understanding; I reply, that then it 
was impossible there should ever have been any knowledge : it being as im- 
possible that things wholly void of knowledge, and operating blindly, and 
without any perception, should produce a knowing being, as it is impossible 
that a triangle should make itself three angles bigger than two right ones 
For it is as repugnant to the idea of senseless matter, that it should put into 
itself sense, perception and knowledge, as it is repugnant to the idea of a 
triangle, that it should put into itself greater angles than two right ones. 

Sect. 6. And therefore God. — Thus from the consideration of ourselves, 
and what we infallibly find in our own constitutions, our reason leads us to the 
knowledge of this certain and evident truth, that there is an eternal, most 
powerful, and most knowing being ; which whether any one will please to call 
God, it matters not. The thing is evident; and from this idea, duly consid- 
ered, will easily be deduced all those other attributes which we ought to as- 
cribe to this eternal being. If nevertheless any one should be found so 
senselessly arrogant as to suppose man alone knowing and wise, but yet the 
product of mere ignorance and chance ; and that all the rest of the universe 
acted only by that blind hap-hazard : — I shall leave with him that very ra- 
tional and emphatical rebuke of Tully, 1. ii. De Leg. to be considered at his 
leisure : " What can be more sillily arrogant and misbecoming than for a man 
to think that he has a mind and understanding in him, but yet in all the uni- 
verse beside there is no such thing] Or that those things, which with the 
utmost stretch of his reason he can scarce comprehend, should be moved and 
managed without any reason at all ?" " Quid est enim verius, quam neminem 
esse oportere tarn stulte arrogantem, ut in se mentem et rationem putet 
inesse, in coelo mundoque non putet ] Aut ea quae vix summa ingenii ratione 
comprehendat, nulla ratione moveri putet V 

From what has been said it is plain to me, we have a more certain know- 
ledge of the existence of a God, than of any thing our senses have not im- 
mediately discovered to us. Nay, I presume I may say, that we more cer- 
tainly know that there is a God, than that there is any thing else without us. 
When I say we know, I mean there is such a knowledge within our reach, 
which we cannot miss, if we will but apply our minds to that, as we do to 
several other inquiries. 

Sect. 7. Our idea of a most perfect being not the sole proof of a God. — 
How far the idea of a most perfect being, which a man may frame in his 
mind, does or does not prove the existence of a God, I will not here ex- 
amine. For in the different make of men's tempers and application of their 
thoughts, some arguments prevail more on one, and some on another, for 
the confirmation of the same truth. But yet, I think, this I may say, that it 
is an ill way of establishing this truth, and silencing atheists, to lay the 
whole stress of so important a point as this upon that sole foundation ; and 
take some men's having that idea of God in their minds (for it is evident 
some men have none, and some worse than none, and the most very differ- 
ent) for the only proof of a deity : and out of an over-fondness of that darling 
invention cashier, or at least endeavour to invalidate all other arguments, 
and forbid us to hearken to those proofs, as being weak or fallacious, which 
our own existence and the sensible parts of the universe offer so clearly and 
so cogently to our thoughts, that I deem it impossible for a considering man 
to withstand them. For I judge it as certain and clear a truth, as can any 
where be delivered, that the invisible things of God are clearly seen from the 
creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made, even 
his eternal power and Godhead. Though our own being furnishes us, as I 
have shown, with an evident and incontestible proof of a deity, — and I be- 
lieve nobody can avoid the cogency of it, who will but as carefully attend to 
it, as to any other demonstration or so many parts ; — yet this being so funda- 
mental a truth, and of that consequence, that all religion and genuine moral- 
ity depend thereon, I doubt not but I shall be forgiven by my reader, if I go 
over some parts of this argument again, and enlarge a little more upon them. 

Sect. 8. Something from eternity. — There is no truth more evident, than 



Ch. 10, EXISTENCE OF A GOD. 411 

that something must be from eternity. I never yet heard of any one so un- 
reasonable, or that could suppose so manifest a contradiction, as a time where- 
in there was perfectly nothing- : this being of all absurdities the greatest, to 
imagine that pure nothing, the perfect negation and absence of all beings, 
should ever produce any real existence. 

It being then unavoidable for all rational creatures to conclude, that some- 
thing has existed from eternity ; let us next see what kind of thing that must be. 

Sect. 9. Two sorts of beings, cogitative and incogitative. — There are bu' 
two sorts of beings in the world, that man knows or conceives. 

First, such as are purely material, without sense, perception, or thought, a? 
the clippings of our beards, and parings of our nails. 

Secondly, sensible, thinking, perceiving beings, such as we find ourselves 
to be, which, if you please, we will hereafter call cogitative and incogitative 
beings; which to our present purpose, if for nothing else, are, perhaps better 
terms than material and immaterial. 

Sect. 10. Incogitative beings cannpt produce a cogitative. — If then there 
must be something eternal, let us see what sort of being it must be. And to 
that, it is very obvious to reason, that it must necessarily be a cogitative being. 
For it is as impossible to conceive, that ever bare incogitative matter should 
produce a thinking intelligent being, as that nothing should of itself produce 
matter. Let us suppose any parcel of matter eternal, great or small, we shall 
find it, in itself, able to produce nothing. For example, let us suppose the 
matter of the next pebble we meet with eternal, closely united, and 
the parts firmly at rest together; if there were no other being in the world, 
must it not eternally remain so, a dead inactive lump 7 Is it possible to con- 
ceive it can add motion to itself, being purely matter, or produce any thing ] 
Matter, then, by its own strength, cannot produce in itself so much as mo- 
tion : the motion it has must also be from eternity, or else be produced and 
added to matter by some other being more powerful than matter; matter, as 
is evident, having not power to produce motion in itself. But let us suppose 
motion eternal too ; yet matter, incogitative matter and motion, whatever 
changes it might produce of figure and bulk, could never produce thought : 
knowledge will still be as far beyond the power of motion and matter to pro- 
duce, as matter is beyond the power of nothing or nonentity to produce. 
And I appeal to every one's own thoughts, whether he cannot as easily con- 
ceive matter, produced by nothing, as thought to be produced by pure matter, 
when before there was no such thing as thought, or an intelligent being ex- 
isting'? Divide matter into as minute parts as you will (which we are apt to 
imagine a sort of spiritualizing, or making a thinking thing of it) ; vary the 
figure and motion of it as much as you please ; a globe, cube, cone, prism, 
cylinder, &c. whose diameters are about 1000000th part of a gry(a), will ope- 
rate no otherwise upon other bodies of proportionable bulk than those of an 
inch or foot diameter ; and you may as rationally expect to produce sense, 
thought, and knowledge, by putting together, in a certain figure and motion, 
gross particles of matter, as by those that are the very minutest that do any 
where exist. They knock, impel, and resist one another, just as the greater do, 
and that is all they can do. So that if we will suppose nothing first, or eter- 
nal, matter can never begin to be : if we suppose bare matter, without motion, 
eternal motion can never begin to be : we suppose only matter and motion 
first, or eternal ; thought can never begin to be. For it is impossible to con- 
ceive that matter, either with or without motion, could have originally in 
and from itself sense, perception, and knowledge ; as is evident from hence, 

(a) A gry is 1-1 0th of a line, a line l-10th of an inch, an inch l-10th of a philosophical 
foot, a philosophical foot l-3d of a pendulum, whose diadroms, in the latitude of 4.* 
degrees, are each equal to one second of time or l-60thof a minute. I have affect- 
edly made use of this measure here, and the parts of it, under a decimal division, 
with names to them ; because, I think, it would be of general convenience that this 
should he th* 1 common measure, in the commonwealth of letters. 



412 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

that then sense, perception, and knowledge must be a property eternally in- 
separable from matter and every particle of it. Not to add that though our 
general or specific conception of matter makes us speak of it as one thing, 
yet really all matter is not one individual thing, neither is there any such 
tiling existing as one material being, or one single body that we know or can 
conceive. And therefore if matter were the eternal first cogitative being, there 
would not be one eternal infinite cogitative being, but an infinite number of 
eternal finite cogitative beings, independent one of another, of limited force 
and distinct thoughts, which could never produce that order, harmony, and 
beauty which are to be found in nature. Since therefore whatsoever is the 
first eternal being must necessarily be cogitative; and whatsoever is first of all 
things must necessarily contain ii. ft and actually have, at least, all the per- 
fections that can ever after exist ; nor can it ever give to another any perfec- 
tion that it hath not, either actually in itself, or at least, in a higher degree ; 
it necessarily follows, that the first eternal being cannot be matter. 

Sect. 11. Therefore there has been an eternal wisdom. — If therefore it be 
evident, that something necessarily must exist from eternity, it is also as evi- 
dent, that that something must necessarily be a cogitative being : for it is as 
impossible that incogitative matter should produce a cogitative being, as that 
nothing, or the negation of all being, should produce a positive being or 
matter. 

Sect. 12. Though this discovery of the necessary existence of an eternal 
mind does sufficiently lead us into the knowledge of God ; since it will hence 
follow, that all other knowing beings that have a beginning must depend on 
him, and have no other ways of knowledge, or extent of power, than what he 
gives them ; and therefore if he made those, he made also the less excellent 
pieces of this universe, all inanimate beings, whereby his omniscience, power, 
and providence will be established, and all his other attributes necessarily fol- 
low : yet to clear up this a little farther, we will see what doubts can be raised 
against it. 

Sect. 13. Whether material or no. — First, perhaps it will be said, that 
though it be as clear as demonstration can make it, that there must be an 
eternal being, and that being must also be knowing ; yet it does not follow. 
"ait that thinking being may also be material. Let it be so ; it equally still 
follows, that there is a God. For if there be an eternal, omniscient, omnipo- 
tent being, it is certain that there is a God, whether you imagine that being 
to be material or no. But herein, I suppose, lies the danger and deceit of 
that supposition : there being no way to avoid the demonstration, that there 
is an eternal knowing being, men, devoted to matter, would willingly have it 
granted, that this knowing being is material ; and then letting slide out of 
their minds, or the discourse, the demonstration whereby an eternal knowing 
being was proved necessarily to exist, would argue all to be matter, and so 
deny a God, that is, an eternal cogitative being ; whereby they are so far from 
establishing, that they destroy their own hypothesis. For if there can be, in 
their opinion, eternal matter, without any eternal cogitative being, they mani- 
festly separate matter and thinking, and suppose no necessary connexion of 
the one with the other, and so establish the necessity of an eternal spirit, but 
not of matter, since it has been proved already, that an eternal cogitative 
oeing is unavoidably to be granted. Now if thinking and matter may be 
separated, the eternal existence of matter will not follow from the eternal 
existence of a cogitative being, and they suppose it to no purpose. 

Sect. 14. Not material, 1. Because every particle of matter is not cogi- 
tative. — But now let us suppose they can satisfy themselves or others, that 
this eternal thinking being is material. 

First, I would ask them, whether they imagine, that all matter, every 
particle of matter, thinks'? This, I suppose, they will scarce say ; since then 
there would be as many eternal thinking beings as there are particles of mat 
ver, and so an infinity of gods. And yet if they will not allow matter as mat 
* er, that is, every particle of matter, to be as well cogitative as extended, the v 



Ch. ]£, EXISTENCE OF A GOD. 413 

will have as hard a task to make out to their own reasons a cogitative being 
out of incogitative particles, as an extended being out of unextended parts, it 
I may so speak. 

Sect. 15. 2. One particle alone of matter cannot be cogitative. — Second- 
ly, if all matter does not think, I next ask, " Whether it be only one atom 
that does so'!" This has as many absurdities as the other ; for then this atom 
of matter must be alone eternal or not. If this alone be eternal, then thiu 
alone, by its powerful thought or will, made all the rest of matter. And so 
we have the creation of matter by a powerful thought, which is that the ma- 
terialists stick at. For if they suppose one single thinking atom to have 
produced all the rest of matter, they cannot ascribe that pre-eminency to it 
upon any other account than that of its thinking, the only supposed difference. 
But allow it to be by some other way, which is above our conception, it must 
still be creation, and these men must give up their great maxim, ex nihilo nil 
■fit. If it be said, that all the rest of matter is equally eternal, as that thinking 
atom, it will be to say any thing at pleasure, though ever so absurd : for to 
suppose all matter eternal, and yet one small particle in knowledge and power 
infinitely above all the rest, is without any the least appearance of reason to 
frame an hypothesis. Every particle of matter, as matter, is capable of all 
the same figures and motions of any other ; and I challenge any one, in his 
thoughts, to add any thing else to one above another. 

Sect. 16. 3. A system of incogitative matter cannot be cogitative. — If 
then neither one peculiar atom alone can be this eternal thinking being ; nor 
all matter as matter, i. e. every particle of matter, can be it ; it only remains, 
that it is some certain system of matter duly put together, that is this thinking 
eternal being. This is that which, I imagine, is that notion which men are 
aptest to have of God, who would have him a material being, as most readily 
suggested to them, by the ordinary conceit they have of themselves, and other 
men, which they take to be material thinking beings. But this imagination, 
however more natural, is no less absurd than the other ; for to suppose the 
eternal thinking being to be nothing else but a composition of particles of 
matter, each whereof is incogitative, is to ascribe all the wisdom and know- 
ledge of that eternal being only to the juxta-position of parts ; than which 
nothing can be more absurd. For unthinking particles of matter, however put 
together, can have nothing thereby added to them, but a new relation of posi- 
tion, which it is impossible should give thought and knowledge to them. 

Sect. 17. Whether in motion or at rest. — But farther, this corporeal sys- 
tem either has all its parts at rest, or it is a certain motion of the parts wherein 
its thinking consists. If it be perfectly at rest, it is but one lump, and so can 
have no privileges above one atom. 

If it be the motion of its parts on which its thinking depends, all the 
thoughts there must be unavoidably accidental and limited ; since all the par- 
ticles that by motion cause thought, being each of them in itself without any 
thought, cannot regulate its own motions, much less be regulated by the 
thought of the whole ; since that thought is not the cause of motion (for then 
it must be antecedent to it, and so without it) but the consequence of it, 
whereby freedom, power, choice, and all rational and wise thinking or acting, 
will be quite taken away : so that such a thinking being will be no better nor 
wiser than pure blind matter ; since to resolve all into the accidental unguided 
motions of blind matter, or into thought depending on unguided motions of 
blind matter, is the same thing; not to mention the narrowness of such 
thoughts and knowledge that must depend on the motion of such parts. But 
there needs no enumeration of any more absurdities and impossibilities in this 
hypothesis (however full of them it be) than that before-mentioned; since let 
this thinking system be all, or a part of the matter of the universe, it is im- 
possible that any one particle should either know its own or the motion of 
any other particle, or the whole know the motion of every particle ; and so 
regulate its own thoughts or motions, or indeed have any thought resulting 
from s^ch motion. 



414 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

Sect. 18. Matter not coeternal with an eternal mind. — -Others would have 
matter to be eternal, notwithstanding that they allow an eternal, cogitative, 
immaterial being. This, though it take not away the being of a God, yet 
since it denies one and the first great piece of his workmanship, the creation, 
let us consider it a little. Matter must be allowed eternal. Why] because 
you cannot conceive how it can be made out of nothing. Why do you not 
also think yourself eternal? You will answer, perhaps, because about twenty 
or forty years since you began to be. But if I ask you what that you is, 
which began then to be, you can scarce tell me. The matter, whereof yor. 
are made, began not then to be ; for if it did, then it is not eternal : but it be- 
gan to be put together in such a fashion and frame as makes up your body , 
but yet that frame of particles is not you, it makes not that thinking thing 
you are; (for I have now to do with one who allows an eternal, immaterial, 
thinking being, but would have unthinking matter eternal too) therefore when 
did that thinking thing begin to be ? If it did never begin to be, then have 
you always been a thinking thing from eternity ; the absurdity whereof I need 
not confute, till I meet with one who is so void of understanding as to own it. 
If therefore you can allow a thinking thing to be made out of nothing (as all 
things that are not eternal must be) why also can you not allow it possible 
for a material being to be made out of nothing, by an equal power, but that 
you have the experience of the one in view, and not of the other? though, 
when well considered, creation of a spirit will be found to require no less 
power than the creation of matter. Nay, possibly, if we would emancipate 
ourselves from vulgar notions, and raise our thoughts as far as they would 
reach, to a closer contemplation of things, we might be able to aim at some 
dim and seeming conception how matter might at first be made, and begin to 
exist by the power of that eternal first being : but to give beginning and being 
to a spirit, would be found a more inconceivable effect of omnipotent power. 
But this being what would perhaps lead us too far from the notions on which 
the philosophy now in the world is built, it would not be pardonable to deviate 
so far from them ; or to inquire, so far as grammar itself would authorize, if 
the common settled opinion opposes it: especially in this place, where the 
received doctrine serves well enough to our present purpose, and leaves this 
past doubt, that the creation or beginning of any one substance out of nothing 
being once admitted, the creation of all other, but the Creator himself, may, 
with the same ease, be supposed. 

Sect. 19. — But you will say, is it not impossible to admit of the making 
any thing out of nothing, since we cannot possibly conceive it? I answer, 
No: 1. Because it is not reasonable to deny the power of an infinite being, 
because we cannot comprehend its operations. We do not deny other effects 
upon this ground, because we cannot possibly conceive the manner of their 
production. We cannot conceive how any thing but impulse of body can 
move body; and yet that is not a reason sufficient to make us deny it impos- 
sible, against the constant experience we have of it in ourselves, in all our 
voluntary motions, which are produced in us only by the free action or 
thought of our own minds ; and are not, nor can be the effects of the impulse 
or determination of the motion of blind matter in or upon our own bodies ; 
for then it could not be in our power or choice to alter it. For example : my 
right hand writes, whilst my left hand is still. What causes rest in one, and 
motion in the other? Nothing but my will, a thought of my mind; my 
thought only changing, the right hand rests, and the left hand moves. This 
is matter of fact, which cannot be denied. Explain this, and make it intelli- 
j^ble, and then the next step will be to understand creation. For the giving 
a new determination to the motion of the animal spirits (which some make 
use of to explain voluntary motion) clears not the difficulty one jot : to alter 
the determination of motion being in this case no easier nor less than to give 
motion itself; since the new determination given to the animal spirits must 
be either immediately by thought, or by some other body put in their way by 
thought, which was not in their way before, and so must owe its motion to 



Ch. 10. EXISTENCE OF A GOD. 415 

thought: either of which leaves voluntary motion as unintelligible as it was 
before. In the mean time it is an overvaluing ourselves to reduce all to the 
narrow measure of our capacities, and to conclude all things impossible to 
be done, whose manner of doing exceeds our comprehension. This is to 
make our comprehension infinite, or God finite, when what he can do is 
limited to what we can conceive of it. If you do not understand the opera- 
tions of your own finite mind, that thinking thing within you, do not deem it 
strange that you cannot comprehend the operations of that eternal infinite 
Blind, who made and governs all things, and whom the heaven of heavena 
cannot contain. 



CHAPTER XL 

OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXISTENCE OF OTHER THINGS. 

Sect. 1. It is to be had only by sensation. — The knowledge of our own 
heing we have by intuition. The existence of a God reason clearly makes 
known us, as has been shown. 

The knowledge of the existence of any other thing we can have only by 
sensation : for there being no necessary connexion of real existence with any 
idea a man hath in his memory, nor of any other existence but that of God, 
with the existence of any particular man ; no particular man can know the 
existence of any other being, but only when by actual operating upon him it 
makes itself perceived by him. For the having the idea of any thing in our 
mind no more proves the existence of that thing, than the picture of a man 
evidences his being in the world, or the visions of a dream make thereby a 
true history. 

Sect. 2. Instance, whiteness of this paper. — It is therefore the actual 
receiving of ideas from without, that gives us notice of the existence of other 
things, and makes us know that something doth exist at that time without 
us, which causes that idea in us, though perhaps we neither know nor con- 
sider how it does it : for it takes not from the certainty of our senses, and 
the ideas we receive by them, that we know not the manner wherein they 
are produced, v. g. whilst I write this I have, by the paper affecting my 
eyes, that idea produced in my mind which, whatever object causes, I call 
white ; by which I know that that quality or accident (i. e. whose appearance 
before my eyes always causes that idea) doth really exist, and hath a being 
without me. And of this, the greatest assurance I can possibly have, and to 
which my faculties can attain, is the testimony of my eyes, which are the 
proper and sole judges of this thing, whose testimony I have reason to rely 
on as so certain, that I can no more doubt, whilst I write this, that I see 
white and black, and that something really exists,, that causes that sensation 
in me, than that I write or move my hand : which is a certainty as great as 
human nature is capable of, concerning the existence of any thing but a 
man's self alone, and of God. 

Sect. 3. This, though not so certain as demonstration, yet may be called 
knowledge, and proves the existence of things without us. — The notice we 
have by our senses of the existing of things without us, though it be not 
altogether so certain as our intuitive knowledge, or the deductions of our 
reason, employed about the clear abstract ideas of our own minds ; yet it is 
an assurance that deserves the name of knowledge. If we persuade our- 
selves that our faculties act and inform us right, concerning the existence of 
those objects that affect them, it cannot pass for an ill-grounded confidence : 
for I think nobody can, in earnest, be so sceptical as to be uncertain of the 
existence of those things which he sees and feels. At least, he that can 
doubt so far (whatever he may have with his own thoughts) will never have 



416 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4 

any controversy with me ; since he can never be sure I say any thing con- 
trary to his own opinion. As to myself, I think God has given me assurance 
enough of the existence of things without me ; since by their different appli- 
cation I can produce in myself both pleasure and pain, which is one great 
concernment of my present state. This is certain, the confidence that our 
faculties do not herein deceive us is the greatest assurance we are capable 
of, concerning the existence of material beings. For we cannot act any 
thing but by our faculties ; nor talk of knowledge itself, but by the helps of 
those faculties which are fitted to apprehend even what knowledge is. But 
besides the assurance we have from our senses themselves, that they do not 
err in the information they give us, of the existence of things without us, 
when they are affected by them, we are farther confirmed in this assurance 
by other concurrent reasons. 

Sect. 4. 1. Because we cannot have them but by the inlet of the senses. — 
First, it is plain those perceptions are produced in us by exterior causes 
affecting our senses : because those that want the organs of any sense never 
can have the ideas belonging to that sense produced in their minds. This is 
too evident to be doubted : and therefore we cannot but be assured that they 
come in by the organs of that sense, and no other way. The organs them- 
selves, it is plain, do not produce them ; for then the eyes of a man in the 
dark would produce colours, and his nose smell roses in the winter : but we 
see nobody gets the relish of a pine-apple till he goes to the Indies, where it 
is, and tastes it. 

Sect. 5. 2. Because an idea from actual sensation, and another from 
memory, are very distinct perceptions. — Secondly, because sometimes I find 
that I cannot avoid the having those ideas produced in my mind. For though 
when my eyes are shut, or windows fast, I can at pleasure recall to my mind 
the ideas of light, or the sun, which former sensations had lodged in my 
memory ; so I can at pleasure lay by that idea, and take into my view that 
of the smell of a rose, or taste of sugar. But if I turn my eyes at noon 
towards the sun, I cannot avoid the ideas which the light, or sun, then pro- 
duces in me. So that there is a manifest difference between the ideas laid 
up in my memory (over which, if they were there only, I should have con- 
stantly the same power to dispose of them, and lay them by at pleasure) and 
those which force themselves upon me, and I cannot avoid having. And 
therefore it must needs be some exterior cause, a,nd the brisk acting of some 
objects without me, whose efficacy I cannot resist, that produces those ideas 
in my mind, whether I will or no. Besides, there if nobody who doth not 
perceive the difference in himself between contemplating the sun, as he hath 
the idea of it in his memory, and actually looking upon it ; of which two his 
perception is so distinct, that few of his ideas are more distinguishable one 
from another. And therefore he hath certain knowledge, that they are not 
both memory, or the actions of his mind, and fancies only within him ; but 
that actual seeing hath a cause without. 

Sect. 6. 3. Pleasure or pain which accompanies actual sensation, ac- 
companies not the returning of those ideas without the external objects. — 
Thirdly, add to this, that many of those ideas are produced in us with pain, 
which afterward we remember without the least offence. Thus the pain of 
heat or cold, when the idea of it is revived in our minds, gives us no disturb- 
ance ; which, when felt, was very troublesome, and is again, when actually 
repeated; which is occasioned by the disorder the external object causes in 
our bodies when applied to it. And we remember the pains of hunger, thirst, 
or the headach, without any pain at all ; which would either never disturb us, or 
else constantly do it, as often as we thought of it, were there nothing more but 
ideas floating in our minds, and appearances entertaining our fancies, without 
the real existence of things affecting us from abroad. The same may be 
said of pleasure accompanying several actual sensations, and though mathe- 
matical demonstrations depend not upon sense, yet the examining them by 
diagrams gives great credit to the evidence of our sight, and seems to give it 



Oh. 11. EXISTENCE OF OTHER THINGS. 11? 

a certainty approaching" to that, of demonstration itself. For it would be very 
strange that a man should allow it for an undeniable truth, that two angles of 
a figure, which he measures by lines and angles of a diagram, should be biggei 
one than the other; and yet doubt of the existence of those lines and angles, 
which by looking on he makes use of to measure that by. 

Sect. 7. 4. Our senses assist one another's testimony of the existence 
of outward things. — Fourthly, our senses in many cases bear witness to the 
truth of each other's report, concerning the existence of sensible things 
without us. He that sees a fire may, if he doubt whether it be any thing 
more than a bare fancy, feel it too ; and be convinced by putting his hand 
in it : which certainly could never be put into such exquisite pain by a bare 
idea or phantom, unless that the pain be a fancy too, which yet he cannot, 
when the burn is well, by raising the idea of it, bring upon himself again. 

Thus I see, whilst I write this, I can change the appearance of the paper : 
and by designing the letters tell beforehand what new idea it shall exhibit the 
very next moment, by barely drawing my pen over it : which will neither 
appear (let me fancy as much as I will) if my hands stand still ; or though 
I move my pen, if my eyes be shut : nor, when those characters are once 
made on the paper, can I choose afterward but see them as they are : that is, 
have the ideas of such letters as I have made. Whence it is manifest, that 
they are not barely the sport and play of my own imagination, when I find 
that the characters that were made at the pleasure of my own thought, do 
not obey them ; nor yet cease to be, whenever I shall fancy it ; but continue 
to aifect the senses constantly and regularly, according to the figures I made 
them. To which if we will add, that the sight of those shall, from another 
man, draw such sounds as I beforehand design they shall stand for ; there 
will be little reason left to doubt that those words I write do really exist 
without me, when they cause a long series of regular sounds to affect my 
ears, which could not be the effect of my imagination, nor could my memory 
retain them in that order. 

Sect. 8. This certainty is as great as our condition needs. — But yet, if 
after all this any one will be so sceptical as to distrust his senses, and to affirm 
that all we see and hear, feel and taste, think and do, during our whole being, 
is but the series and deluding appearances of a long dream, whereof there is 
no reality ; and therefore will question the existence of all things, or our 
knowledge of any thing ; I must desire him to consider, that, if all be a dream, 
then he doth but dream that he makes the question ; and so it is not much 
matter that a waking man should answer him. But yet, if he pleases, he 
may dream that I make him this answer, that the certainty of things existing 
in rerum natura, when we have the testimony of our senses for it, is not only 
as great as our frame can attain to, but as our condition needs. For our 
faculties being suited not to the full extent of being, nor to a perfect, clear, 
comprehensive knowledge of things, free from all doubt and scruple ; but to 
the preservation of us, in whom they are, and accommodated to the use of 
life ; they serve to our purpose well enough, if they will but give us certain 
notice of those things which are convenient or inconvenient to us. For he 
that sees a candle burning, and hath experimented the force of its flame, by 
putting his finger in it, will little doubt that this is something existing without 
him, which does him harm, and puts him to great pain : which is assurance 
enough, when no man requires greater certainty to govern his actions by than 
what is as certain as his actions themselves. And if our dreamer pleases to 
try whether the glowing heat of a glass furnace be barely a wandering ima- 
gination in a drowsy man's fancy ; by putting his hand into it he may perhaps 
be wakened into a certainty greater than he could wish, that it is something 
more than bare imagination. So that this evidence is as great as we can 
desire, being as certain to us as our pleasure or pain, i. e. happiness or 
misery ; beyond which we have no concernment, either of knowing or being. 
Such an assurance of the existence of things without us is sufficient to direct 
us in the attaining the good, and avoiding the evil, which is caused by them; 
3C 



413 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

which is the important concernment we have of being made acquainted with 
them. 

Sect. 9. But reaches no farther than actual sensation. — In fine, then, 
when our senses do actually convey into our understandings any idea, we 
cannot but be satisfied that there doth something at that time really exist 
without us, which doth affect our senses, and by them give notice of itself to 
our apprehensive faculties, and actually produce that idea which we then 
perceive : and we cannot so far distrust their testimony as to doubt, that such 
collections of simple ideas, as we have observed by our senses to be united 
together, do really exist together. But this knowledge extends as far as the 
present testimony of our senses, employed about particular objects that do then 
affect them, and no farther. For if I saw such a collection of simple ideas, 
as is wont to be called man, existing together one minute since, and am now 
alone, I cannot be certain that the same man exists now, since there is no 
necessary connexion of his existence a minute since with his existence now : 
by a thousand ways he may cease to be, since T had the testimony of my 
senses for his existence. And if I cannot be certain that the man I saw last 
to-day is now in being, I can less be certain that he is so, who hath been 
longer removed from my senses, and I have not seen since yesterday, or since 
the last year : and much less can I be certain of the existence of men that 1 
never saw. And therefore, though it be highly probable that millions of men 
do now exist, yet, whilst I am alone writing this, I have not that certainty of 
it which we strictly call knowledge ; though the great likelihood of it puts 
me past doubt, and it be reasonable for me to do several things upon the con- 
fidence that there are men (and men also of my acquaintance, with whom I 
have to do) now in the world : but this is but probability, not knowledge. 

Sect. 10. Folly to expect demonstration in every thing. — Whereby yet 
we may observe, how foolish and vain a thing it is for a man of a narrow 
knowledge, who having reason given him to judge of the different evidence 
and probability of things, and to be swayed accordingly ; how vain y I say, it 
is to expect demonstration and certainty in things not capable of it, and refuse 
assent to very rational propositions, and act contrary to very plain and clear 
truths, because they cannot be made out so evident as to surmount every (1 
will not say reason but) pretence of doubting. He that in the ordinary 
affairs of life would admit of nothing but direct plain demonstration, would 
be sure of nothing in this world, but of perishing quickly. The wholesome- 
ness of his meat or drink would not give him reason to venture on it : and I 
would fain know, what it is he could do upon such grounds as are capable of 
no doubt, no objection. 

Sect. 11. Past existence is known by memory. — As when our senses are 
actually employed about any object, we do know that it does exist ; so by our 
memory we may be assured, that heretofore things that affected our senses 
have existed. And thus we have knowledge of the past existence of several 
things, whereof our senses having informed us, our memories still retain the 
ideas ; and of this we are past all doubt, so long as we remember well. But 
this knowledge also reaches no farther than our senses have formerly assured 
us. Thus seeing water at this instant, it is an unquestionable truth to me 
that water doth exist : and remembering that I saw it yesterday, it will also 
be always true, and, as long as my memory retains it, always an undoubted 
proposition to me, that water did exist on the 10th of July 1688, a? it will also 
be equally true, that a certain number of very fine colours did exist, which at 
the same time I saw upon a bubble of that water: but, being now quite out 
of the sight both of the water and bubbles too, it is no more certainly known 
to me that the water doth now exist, than that the bubbles or colours therein 
do so ; it being no more necessary that water should exist to-day, because it 
existed yesterday, than that the colours or bubbles exist to-day because they 
existed yesterday ; though it be exceedingly much more probable, because 
water hath been observed to continue long in existence, but bubbles and the 
colours on them quickly cease to be. 



Ch. 11. EXISTENCE OF OTHER THINGS. 419 

Sect. 12. The existence of spirits not knowable. — What ideas we have 
of spirits, and how we come by them, I have already shown. But though 
we have those ideas in our minds, and know we have them there, the having 
he ideas of spirits does not make us know that any such things do exist 
without us, or that there are any finite spirits, or any other spiritual beings 
Dut the eternal God. We have ground from revelation, and several other 
reasons, to believe with assurance that there are such creatures : but, our 
senses not being able to discover them, we want the means of knowing their 
particular existences. For we can no more know, that there are finite spirits 
really existing, by the idea we have of such beings in our minds, than by the 
ideas any one has of fairies, or centaurs, he can come to know that things 
answering those ideas do really exist. 

And therefore concerning the existence of finite spirits, as well as several 
other things, we must content ourselves with tne evidence of faith ; but uni- 
versal certain propositions concerning this matter are beyond our reach. For 
however true it may be, v. g. that all the intelligent spirits that God ever 
created do still exist ; yet it can never make a part of our certain knowledge 
These and the like propositions we may assent to as highly probable, but are 
not, I fear, in this state capable of knowing. We are not then to put others 
upon demonstrating, nor ourselves upon search of universal certainty, in all 
those matters, wherein we are not capable of any other knowledge, but what 
our senses give us in this or that particular. 

Sect. 13. Particular propositions concerning existence are knowable. — 
By which it appears, that there are two sorts of propositions, 1. There is 
one sort of propositions concerning the existence of any thing answerable 
to such an idea : as having the idea of an elephant, phoenix, motion, or an 
angel, in my mind, the first and natural inquiry is, whether such a thing 
does any where exist 1 And this knowledge is only of particulars. No exist- 
ence of any thing without us, but only of God, can certainly be known farther 
than our senses inform us. 2. There is another sort of propositions, wherein 
is expressed the agreement or disagreement of our abstract ideas, and their 
dependence on one another. Such propositions may be universal and certain. 
So having the idea of God and myself, of fear and obedience, I cannot but 
be sure that God is to be feared and obeyed by me ; and this proposition will 
be certain, concerning man in general, if I have made an abstract idea of 
such a species, whereof I am one particular. But yet this proposition, how 
certain soever, that men ought to fear and obey God, proves not to me the 
existence of men in t\e world, but will be true of all such creatures, when- 
ever they do exist : which certainty of such general propositions, depends on 
the agreement or disagreement to be discovered in those abstract ideas. 

Sect. 14. And general propositions concerning abstract ideas. — In the 
former case, our knowledge is the consequence of the existence of things 
producing ideas in our minds by our senses : in the latter knowledge is the 
consequence of the ideas (be they what they will) that are in our minds, 
producing there general certain propositions. Many of these are called 
ceternce veritates, and all of them indeed are so ; not from being written all 
or any of them in the minds of all men, or that they were any of them pro- 
positions in one's mind till he, having got the abstract ideas, joined or sepa- 
rated them by affirmation or negation. But wheresoever we can suppose 
such a creature as man is, endowed with such faculties, and thereby furnished 
with such ideas as we have, we must conclude, he must needs, when he ap 
plies his thoughts to the consideration of his ideas, know the truth of certain 
propositions, that will arise from the agreement or disagreement which he 
will perceive in his own ideas. Such propositions are therefore called eternal 
truths, not because they are eternal propositions actually formed, and ante- 
cedent to the understanding, that at any time mases them ; nor because they 
are imprinted on the mind from any patterns, that are anywhere out of the 
mind, and existed before : but because being once made about abstract ideas, 
so as to be true, they will whenever they can be supposed to be made again 



420 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

at any time past or to come, by a mind having those ideas, always actually 
be true. For names being supposed to stand perpetually for the same ideas, 
and the same ideas having immutably the same habitudes one to another, pro- 
positions concerning any abstract ideas, that are once true, must needs be 
eternal verities. 



CHAPTER XII. 

OF THE IMPROVEMENT OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 

Sect. 1. Knowledge is not from maxims. — It having been the common 
received opinion among men of letters, that maxims were the foundation of 
all knowledge ; and that the sciences were each of them built upon certain 
prcccognita, from whence the understanding was to take its rise, and by 
which it was to conduct itself, in its inquiries into the matters belonging to 
that science ; the beaten road of the schools has been, to lay down in the 
beginning one or more general propositions, as foundations whereon to build 
the knowledge that was to be had of that subject. These doctrines, thus 
laid down for foundations of any science, were called principles, as the be- 
ginnings from which we must set out, and look no farther backwards in our 
inquiries, as we have already observed. 

Sect. 2. (The occasion of that opinion.) — One thing which might proba- 
bly give an occasion in this way of proceeding in other sciences, was (as I 
suppose) the good success it seemed to have in mathematics, wherein men 
being observed to attain a great certainty of knowledge, these sciences came 
by pre-eminence to be called Mstflx'^aTot, and M*6»0-/?, learning, or things 
learned, thoroughly learned, as having of all others the greatest certainty, 
clearness, and evidence in them. 

Sect. 3. But from the comparing clear and distinct ideas. — But if any 
one will consider, he will (I guess) find, that the great advancement and cer- 
tainty of real knowledge, which men arrived to in these sciences, was not 
owing to the influence of these principles, nor derived from any peculiar ad- 
vantage they received from two or three general maxims, laid" down in the 
beginning ; but from the clear, distinct, complete ideas their thoughts were 
employed about, and the relation of equality and excess so clear between 
some of them, that they had an intuitive knowledge, and by that a way to 
discover it in others, and this without the help of those maxims. For I ask, 
is it not possible for a young lad to know, that his whole body is bigger than 
his little finger, but by virtue of this axiom, that the whole is bigger than a 
part ; nor be assured of it, till he has learned that maxim 1 Or cannot a 
country wench know, that having received a shilling from one that owes her 
three, and a shilling also from another that owes her three, the remaining 
debts in each of their hands are equal ? Cannot she know this, I say, unless 
she fetch the certainty of it from this maxim, that if you take equals from 
equals, the remainder will be equals, a maxim which possibly she never heard 
or thought of] I desire any one to consider, from what has been elsewhere 
said, which is known first and clearest by most people, the particular instance, 
or the general rule ; and which it is that gives life and birth to the other 1 
These general rules are but the comparing our more general and abstract 
ideas, which are the workmanship of the mind made, and names given to 
them, for the easier despatch in its reasonings, and drawing into comprehen- 
sive terms, and short rules, its various and multiplied observations. But 
knowledge began in the mind, and was founded on particulars ; though after- 
ward, perhaps no notice be taken thereof: it being natural for the mind (for- 
ward still to enlarge its knowledge) most attentively to lay up those general 
notions, and make the proper use of them, which is to disburden the memory 



Ch. 12. IMPROVEMENT OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 421 

of the cumbersome load of particulars. For I desire it may be considered 
what more certainty there is to a child, or any one, that his body, little finger 
and all, is bigger than his little finger alone,. after you have given to his body 
the name whole, and to his little finger the name part, than he could have had 
before ; or what new knowledge concerning his body can these two relative 
terms give him, which he could not have without them 1 Could he not know 
.hat his body was bigger than his little finger, if his language were yet so 
miperfect, that he had no such relative terms as whole and part ? I ask 
farther, when he has got these names, how is he more certain that his body 
is a whole, and his little finger a part, than he was or might be certain, before 
he learnt those terms, that his body was bigger than his little finger ] Any 
one may as reasonably doubt or deny that his little finger is a part of his 
body, as that it is less than his body. And he that can doubt whether it be 
less, will as certainly doubt whether it be a part. So that the maxim, the 
whole is bigger than a part, can never be made use of to prove the little finger 
less than the body, but when it is useless, by being brought to convince one 
of a truth which he knows already. For he that does not certainly know 
that any parcel of matter with another parcel of matter joined to it, is bigger 
than either of them alone, will never be able to know it by the help of these 
two relative terms whole and part, make of them what maxim you please. 

Sect. 4. Dangerous to build upon precarious principles. — But be it in 
the mathematics as it will, whether it be clearer, that taking an inch from a 
black line of two inches, and an inch from a red line of two inches, the re- 
maining parts of the two lines will be equal, or that if you take equals from 
equals, the remainder will be equals : which, I say, of these two is the clearer 
and first known, I leave it to any one to determine, it not being material to 
my present occasion. That which I have here to do, is to inquire, whether 
if it be the readiest way to knowledge to begin with general maxims, and 
build upon them, it be yet a safe way to take the principles which are laid 
down in any other science as unquestionable truths ; and so receive them 
without examination, and adhere to them, without suffering them to be 
doubted of, because mathematicians have been so happy, or so fair, to use 
none but self-evident and undeniable. If this be so, I know not what may 
not pass for truth in morality, what may not be introduced and proved in 
natural philosophy. 

Let that principle of some of the philosophers, that all is matter, and that 
there is nothing else, be received for certain and indubitable, and it will be 
easy to be seen, by the writings of some that have revived it again in our 
days, what consequences it will lead us into. Let any one, with Polemo, 
take the world ; or with the stoics, the aether, or the sun ; or with Anaximenes, 
the air, to be God ; and what a divinity, religion, and worship must we needs 
have ! Nothing can be so dangerous as principles thus taken up without ques- 
tioning or examination ; especially if they be such as concern morality, which 
influence men's lives, and give a bias to all their actions. Who might not 
justly expect another kind of life in Aristippus, who placed happiness in 
bodily pleasure ; and in Antisthenes, who made virtue sufficient to felicity ! 
And he who, with Plato, shall place beatitude in the knowledge of God, will 
have his thoughts raised to other contemplations than those who look not be- 
yond this spot of earth, and those perishing things which are to be had in it. 
He that, with Archelaus, shall lay it down as a principle, that right and 
wrong, honest and dishonest, are defined only by laws, and not by nature, will 
have other measures of moral rectitude and pravity than those who take it for 
granted, that we are under obligations antecedent to all human constitutions. 

Sect. 5. This is no certain way to truth. — If therefore those that pass 
for principles are not certain (which we must have some way to know, thai 
we may be able to distinguish them from those that are doubtful) but are only 
made so to us by our blind assent, we are liable to be misled by them ; and 
instead of being guided into truth, we shall, by principles, be only confirmed 
ji mistake and err r. 



422 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4 

Sect. 6. But to compare clear complete ideas under steady names. — But 

since the knowledge of the certainty of principles, as well as of all other 
truths, depends only upon the perception we have of the agreement or dis- 
agreement of our ideas, the way to improve our knowledge is not, I am sure, 
blindly, and with an implicit faith, to receive and swallow principles ; but is, 
I think, to get and fix in our minds clear, distinct, and complete ideas, as far 
as they are to be had, and annex to them proper and constant names. And 
thus, perhaps, without any other principles but barely considering those ideas, 
and by comparing them one with another, finding their agreement and disa- 
greement, and their several relations and habitudes ; we shall get more true 
and clear knowledge, by the conduct of this one rule, than by taking up prin- 
ciples, and thereby putting our minds into the disposal of others. 

Sect. 7. The true method of advancing in knowledge is by considering 
our abstract ideas. — We must, therefore, if we will proceed as reason 
advises, adapt our methods of inquiry to the nature of the ideas we examine, 
and the truth we search after. General and certain truths are only founded 
in the habitudes and relations of abstract ideas. A sagacious and methodical 
■application of our thoughts, for the finding out these relations, is the only way 
to discover all that can be put with truth and certainty concerning them into 
ofeneral propositions. By what steps we are to proceed in these is to be 
learned in the schools of the mathematicians, who from very plain and easy 
beginnings, by gentle degrees, and a continued chain of reasonings, proceed 
to the discovery and demonstration of truths, that appear at first sight beyond 
numan capacity. The art of finding proofs, and the admirable methods they 
nave invented for the singling out, and laying in order, those intermediate 
ideas that demonstratively show the equality or inequality of inapplicable 
quantities, is that which has carried them so far, and produced such wonderful 
and unexpected discoveries : but whether something like this, in respect of 
other ideas, as well as those of magnitude, may not in time be found out, I 
will not determine. This, I think, I may say, that if other ideas, that are 
the real as well as nominal essences of their species were pursued in the way 
familiar to mathematicians, they would carry our thoughts farther, and with 
greater evidence and clearness, than possibly we are apt to imagine. 

Sect. 8. By which morality also may be made clearer. — This gave me 
the confidence to advance that conjecture, which I suggest, chap. iii. viz. that 
morality is capable of demonstration as well as mathematics. For the ideas 
that ethics are conversant about being all real essences, and such as I imagine 
have a discoverable connexion and agreement one with another : so far as 
we can find their habitudes and relations, so far we shall be possessed of cer- 
tain real and general truths ; and I doubt not, but, if a right method were 
taken, a great part of morality might be made out with that clearness, that 
could leave, to a considering man, no more reason to doubt, than he could 
have to doubt of the truth of propositions in mathematics, which have been 
demonstrated to him. 

Sect. 9. But knowledge of bodies is to be improved only by experience. — 
In our search after the knowledge of substances, our want of ideas, that are 
suitable to such a way of proceeding, obliges us to a quite different method. 
We advance not here, as in the other (where our abstract ideas are real as 
well as nominal essences) by contemplating our ideas, and considering their 
relations and correspondences ; that helps us very little, for the reasons that, 
in another place, we have at large set down. By which I think it is evident, 
that substances afford matter of very little general knowledge ; and the bare 
contemplation of their abstract ideas will carry us but a very little way in 
the search of truth and certainty. What then are we to do for the improve- 
ment of our knowledge in substantial beings ? Here we are to take quite a 
contrary course ; the want of ideas of their real essences sends us from our 
own thoughts to the things themselves as they exist. Experience here must 
teach me what reason cannot : and it is by trying alone that I can certainly 
know what other qualities coexist with those of my complex idea, v. g. 



Ch. 12. IMPROVEMENT OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 423 

whether that yellow, heavy, fusible body I call gold, be malleable or no ; 
which experience (which way ever it prove in that particular body I examine) 
makes me not certain that it is so in all, or any other yellow, heavy, fusible 
bodies, but that which I have tried. Because it is no consequence one way 
or the other from my complex idea ; the necessity or inconsistence of mallea- 
bility hath no visible connexion with the combination of that colour, weight, 
and fusibility in any body. What I have here said of the nominal essence 
of gold, supposed to consist of a body of such a determinate colour, weight, 
and fusibility, will hold true, if malleableness, fixedness, and solubility in 
aqua regia be added to it. Our reasonings from these ideas will carry us but 
a little way in the certain discovery of the other properties in those masses 
of matter wherein all these are to be found. Because the other properties 
of such bodies depending not on these, but on that unknown real essence on 
which these also depend, we cannot by them discover the rest ; we can go no 
farther than the simple ideas of our nominal essence will carry us, which is 
very little beyond themselves ; and so afford us but very sparingly any certain, 
universal, and useful truths. For upon trial having found that particular 
piece (and all others of that colour, weight, and fusibility that I ever tried) 
malleable, that also makes now perhaps a part of my complex idea, part of" 
my nominal essence of gold : whereby though I make my complex idea, to 
which I affix the name gold, to consist of more simple ideas than before, yet 
still, it not containing the real essence of any species of bodies, it helps me 
not, certainly, to know (I say, to know, perhaps it may to conjecture) the 
other remaining properties of that body, farther than they have a visible con- 
nexion with some or all of the simple ideas that make up my nominal essence. 
For example, I cannot be certain from this complex idea whether gold brj 
fixed or no ; because, as before, there is no necessary connexion or incoiv 
sistence to be discovered betwixt a complex idea of a body yellow, heavy, 
fusible, malleable — betwixt these, I say, and fixedness ; so that I may cer- 
tainly know, that in whatsoever body these are found, there fixedness is sure 
to be. Here again for assurance I must apply myself to experience ; as far 
as that reaches I may have certain knowledge, but no farther. 

Sect. 10. This may procure us convenience, not science. — I deny not but 
a man, accustomed to rational and regular experiments, shall be able to see 
farther into the nature of bodies, and guess righter at their yet unknown pro- 
perties, than one that is a stranger to them : but yet, as I have said, this is 
but judgment and opinion, not knowledge and certainty. This way of getting 
and improving our knowledge in substances only by experience and history, 
which is all that the weakness of our faculties in this state of mediocrity we 
are in in this world can attain to, makes me suspect that natural philosophy 
is not capable of being made a science. We are able, I imagine, to reach 
very little general knowledge concerning the species of bodies, and their 
several properties. Experiments and historical observations we may have, 
from which we may draw advantages of ease and health, and thereby increase 
our stock of conveniencies for this life ; but beyond this, I fear, our talents 
reach not, nor are our faculties, as I guess, able to advance. 

Sect. 11. We are fitted for moral knowledge andnatural improvements. — 
From whence it is obvious to conclude that since our faculties are not fitted 
to penetrate into the internal fabric and real essences of bodies; but yet 
plainly discover to us the being of a God, and the knowledge of ourselves, 
enough to lead us into a full and clear discovery of our duty and great con- 
cernment: it will become us, as rational creatures, to employ those faculties 
we have about what they are adapted to, and follow the direction of nature, 
where it seems to point us out the way. For it is rational to conclude that 
our employment lies in those inquiries, and in that sort of knowledge, which 
is most suited to our natural capacities, and carries in it our greatest interest, 
i. e. the condition of our eternal estate. Hence I think I may conclude, that 
morality is the proper science and business of mankind in general (who are 
both concerned and fitted to search out their summum bonum), as several arts, 



424 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

conversant about several parts of nature, are the lot and private talent of 
particular men, for the common use of human life, and their own particular 
subsistence in this world. Of what consequence the discovery of one natural 
body, and its properties, may be to human life, the whole great continent of 
America is a convincing instance ; whose ignorance in useful arts, and want 
of the greatest part of the conveniences of life, in a country that abounded 
with all sorts of natural plenty, I think may be attributed to their ignorance 
of what was to be found in a very ordinary despicable stone, I mean the 
mineral of iron. And whatever we think of our parts or improvements in 
this part of the world, where knowledge and plenty seem to vie with each 
other ; yet to any one that will seriously reflect on it, I suppose it will appear 
past doubt, that were the use of iron lost among us, we should in a few ages 
be unavoidably reduced to the wants and ignorance of the ancient savage 
Americans, whose natural endowments and provisions come no way short of 
those of the most flourishing and polite nations. So that he who first made 
known the use of that one contemptible mineral may be truly styled the 
father of arts, and author of plenty. 

Sect. 12. But must beware of hypothesis and wrong principles. — I 
would not therefore be thought to disesteem or dissuade the study of nature. 
I readily agree the contemplation of his works gives us occasion to admire, 
revere, and glorify their Author : and, if rightly directed, may be of greater 
benefit to mankind than the monuments of exemplary charity, that have at 
so great charge been raised by the founders of hospitals and almshouses. 
He that first invented printing, discovered the use of the compass, or made 
public the virtue and right use of kin kina, did more for the propagation of 
knowledge, for the supply and increase of useful commodities, and saved 
more from the grave, than those who built colleges, workhouses, and hos- 
pitals. All that I would say is, that we should not be too forwardly possessed 
with the opinion or expectation of knowledge, where it is not to be had, or 
by ways that will not attain to it ; that we should not take doubtful systems 
for complete sciences, nor unintelligible notions for scientifical demonstra- 
tions. In the knowledge of bodies, we must be content to glean what we 
can from particular experiments ; since we cannot, from a discovery of their 
real essences, grasp at a time whole sheaves, and in bundles comprehend the 
nature and properties of whole species together. Where our inquiry is con- 
cerning coexistence, or repugnancy to coexist, which by contemplation of our 
ideas we cannot discover ; there experience, observation, and natural history 
must give us by our senses, and by retail, an insight into corporeal substances. 
The knowledge of bodies we must get by our senses, warily employed in 
taking notice of their qualities and operations on one another : and what we 
hope to know of separate spirits in this world we must, I think, expect only 
from revelation. He that shall consider how little general maxims, precarious 
principles, and hypotheses laid down at pleasure, have promoted true know- 
ledge, or helped to satisfy the inquiries of rational men after real improve- 
ments ; how little, I say, the setting out at the end has, for many a^es 
together, advanced men's progress towards the knowledge of natural philo- 
sophy ; will think we have reason to thank those, who in this latter age 
have taken another course, and have trod out to us, though not an easier 
way to learned ignorance, yet a surer way to profitable knowledge. 

Sect. 13. The true use of hypotheses. — Not that we may not, to explain 
any phenomena of nature', make use of any probable hypothesis whatsoever : 
hypotheses, if they are well made, are at least great helps to the memory, 
and often direct us to new discoveries. But my meaning is, that we should 
not take up any one too hastily (which the mind that would always penetrate 
into the causes of things, and have principles to rest on, is very apt to do) 
till we have very well examined particulars, and made several experiments in 
that thing which we would explain by our hypothesis, and see whether it will 
aoree tolhem all ; whether our principles will carry us quite through, and 
not be as inconsistent with one phenomenon of nature as they seem to ac« 



Ch. 12. IMPROVEMENT OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 425 

commodate and explain another. And at least that we take care, that 
the name of principles deceive us not, nor impose on us, by making us 
receive that for an unquestionable truth which is really at best but a very 
doubtful conjecture, such as are most (I had almost said all) of the hypotheses 
in natural philosophy. 

Sect. 14. Clear and distinct ideas with settled names, and the finding 
of those which show their agreement or disagreement are the ways to en- 
large ow- knowledge. — But whether natural philosophy be capable of cer- 
tainty or no, the ways to enlarge our knowledge, as far as we are capable, 
peem to me, in short, to be these two : 

First, The first is to get and settle in our minds determined ideas of those 
things, whereof we have general or specific names ; at least, of so many ot 
them as we would consider and improve our knowledge in, or reason about. 
Ana if they be specific ideas of substances, we should endeavour also to 
make them as complete as we can, whereby I mean that we should put 
together as many simple ideas as, being constantly observed to coexist, may 
perfectly determine the species: and each of those simple ideas, which are 
the ingredients of our complex ones, should be clear and distinct in our 
minds. For i£ being evident that our knowledge cannot exceed our ideas, 
as far as tney are either imperfect, confused, or obscure, we cannot expect 
to have certain, perfect, or clear knowledge. 

Secondly, The other is the art of finding out those intermediate ideas, which 
may show us the agreement or repugnancy of other ideas, which cannot be 
immediately compared. 

Sect. 15. Mathematics an instance of it. — That these two (and not the 
relying on these maxims, and drawing consequences from some general pro- 
positions) are the right methods of improving our knowledge in the ideas of 
other modes besides those of quantity, the consideration of mathematical 
knowledge will easily inform us. Where first we shall find that he, that has 
not a perfect knowledge and clear idea of those angles or figures of which 
he desires to know any thing, is utterly incapable of any knowledge about 
them. Suppose but a man not to have a perfect exact idea of a right angle, 
a scalenum, or trapezium ; and there is nothing more certain than that he 
will in vain seek any demonstration about them. Farther, it is evident, that 
it was not the influence of those maxims, which are taken from principles in 
mathematics, that have led the masters of that science into those wonderful 
discoveries they have made. Let a man of good parts know all the maxims 
generally made use . of in mathematics ever so perfectly, and contemplate 
their extent and consequences as much as he pleases, he will, by their assist- 
ance, I suppose, scarce ever come to know that the square of the hypothenuse 
in a right-angled triangle is equal to the squares of the two other sides. The 
knowledge that the whole is equal to all its parts, and if you take equals from 
equals, the remainder will be equal, &c helped him not, I presume, to this 
demonstration : and a man may, I think, pore long enough on those axioms, 
without ever seeing one jot the more of mathematical truths. They have 
been discovered by the thoughts otherwise applied : the mind had other 
objects, other views before it, far different from those maxims, when it first 
got the knowledge of such truths in mathematics, which men well enough 
acquainted with those received axioms, but ignorant of their method who 
first made these demonstrations, can never sufficiently admire. And who 
knows what methods, to enlarge our knowledge in other parts of science, 
may hereafter be invented, answering that of algebra in mathematics, which 
so readily finds out the ideas of quantities to measure others by; whose 
equality or proportion we could otherwise very hardly or perhaps never come 
to know 1 



3D 



426 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SOME FARTHER CONSIDERATIONS CONCERNING OUR KNOW 

LEDGE. 

Sect. 1. Our knowledge partly necessary, partly voluntary. — Our know- 
ledge, as in other things, so in this, has so great a conformity with our sight, 
that it is neither wholly necessary, nor wholly voluntary. If our knowledo-e 
were altogether necessary, all men's knowledge would not only be alike, but 
every man would know all that is knowable : and if it were wholly voluntary, 
some men so little regard or value it, that they would have extreme little, or 
none at all. Men that have senses cannot choose but receive some ideas bv 
them ; and if they have memory, they cannot but retain some of them ; and 
if they have any distinguishing faculty, cannot but perceive the agreement or 
disagreement of some of them one with another : as he that has eyes, if he 
will open them by day, cannot but see some objects, and perceive a difference 
in thein. But though a man with his eyes open in the light, cannot but see, 
yet there be certain objects, which he may choose whether he will turn his 
eyes to ; there may be in his reach a book containing pictures and discourses, 
capable to delight or instruct him, which yet he may never have the will to 
open, never take the pains to look into. 

Sect. 2. The application voluntary ; but we know as things are, not as 
we please. — There is also another thing in a man's power, and that is, though 
he turns his eyes sometimes toward an object, yet he may choose whether he 
will curiously survey it, and with an intent application endeavour to observe 
accurately all that is visible in it. But yet what he does see, he cannot see 
otherwise than he does. It depends not on his will to see that black which 
appears yellow; nor to persuade himself, that what actually scalds him feels 
cold. The earth will not appear painted with flowers, nor the fields covered 
with verdure, whenever he has a mind to it : in the cold winter he cannot 
help seeing it white and hoary, if he will look abroad. Just thus is it with 
our understanding ; all that is voluntary in our knowledge is the employing 
or withholding any of our faculties from this or that sort of objects, and a 
more or less accurate survey of them : but, they being employed, our will 
hath no power to determine the knowledge of the mind one way or other ; 
that is done only by the objects themselves, as far as they are clearly disco- 
vered. And therefore, as far as men's senses are conversant about external 
objects, the mind cannot but receive those ideas which are presented by them, 
and be informed of the existence of things without : and so far as men's 
thoughts converse with their own determined ideas, they cannot but, in some 
measure, observe the agreement or disagreement that is to be found among 
some of them, which is so far knowledge : and if they have names for those 
ideas which they have thus considered, they must needs be assured of the 
*ruth of those propositions which express that agreement or disagreement 
f .hey perceive in them, and be undoubtedly convinced of those truths. For 
what a man sees, he cannot but see ; and what he perceives, he cannot but 
know that he perceives. 

Sect. 3. Instance, in numbers. — Thus he that has got the ideas of num- 
bers, and hath taken the pains to compare one, two, and three to six, cannot 
choose but know that they are equal : he that hath got the idea of a triangle, 
and found the ways to measure its angles, and their magnitudes, is certain 
that its three angles are equal to two right ones ; and can as little doubt of 
that as of this truth, "that it is impossible for the same thing to be, and not 
to be." 

In natural religion. — He also that hath the idea of an intelligent, but 
frail and weak being, made by, and depending on, another, who is eternal, 



Ch. 13. FARTHER CONSIDERATIONS. 427 

omnipotent, perfectly wise and good, will as certainly know that man is to 
honour, fear, and obey God, as that the sun shines when he sees it. For if 
he hath but the ideas of two such beings in his mind, and will turn his 
thoughts that way, and consider them, he will as certainly find that the infe- 
rior, finite, and dependent, is under an obligation to obey the supreme and 
infinite, as he is certain to find that three, four, and seven are less than 
fifteen, if he will consider and compute those numbers ; nor can he be surer 
in a clear morning that the sun is risen, if he will but open his eyes, and turn 
them that way. But yet these truths, being ever so certain, ever so clear, 
he may be ignorant of either, or of all of them, who will never take the pains 
to employ his faculties, as he should, to inform himself about them. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

OF JUDGMENT. 

Sect. 1. Our knowledge being short, we want something else. — The un- 
derstanding faculties being given to man, not barely for speculation, but also 
for the conduct of his life, man would be at a great loss if he had nothing to 
direct him but what has the certainty of true knowledge. For that being 
very short and scanty, as we have seen, he would be often utterly in the dark, 
and, in most of the actions of his life, perfectly at a stand, had be nothing 
to guide him in the absence of clear and certain knowledge. He that will 
not eat till he has demonstration that it will nourish him ; he that will not 
stir till he infallibly knows the business he goes about will succeed ; will have 
little else to do but to sit still and perish. 

Sect. 2. What use to be made of this twilight state. — Therefore as God 
has set some things in broad day-light ; as he has given us some certain 
knowledge, though limited to a few things in comparison, probably, as a taste 
of what intellectual creatures are capable of, to excite in us a desire and en- 
deavour after a better state ; so in the greatest part of our concernments he 
has afforded us only the twilight, as I may so say, of probability ; suitable, I 
presume, to that state of mediocrity and probationership he has been pleased 
to place us in here ; wherein, to check our over-confidence and presumption, 
we might by every day's experience be made sensible of our short-sightedness, 
and liableness to error ; the sense whereof might be a constant admonition 
to us, to spend the days of this our pilgrimage with industry and care, in the 
search and following of that way, which might lead us to a state of greater 
perfection : it being highly rational to think, even were revelation silent in 
the case, that as men employ those talents God has given them here, they 
shall accordingly receive their rewards at the close of the day, when their 
sun shall set, and night shall put an end to their labours. 

Sect. 3. Judgment supplies the want of knowledge. — The faculty which 
God has given man to supply the want of clear and certain knowledge, in 
cases where that cannot be had, is judgment ; whereby the mind takes its 
ideas to agree or disagree ; or, which is the same, any proposition to be true 
or false, without perceiving a demonstrative evidence in the proofs. The 
mind sometimes exercises this judgment out of necessity, where demonstrative 
proofs and certain knowledge are not to be had ; and sometimes out of lazi- 
ness, unskilfulness, or haste, even where demonstrative and certain proofs 
are to be had. Men often stay not warily to examine the agreement or dis- 
agreement of two ideas, which they are desirous or concerned to know ; but, 
either incapable of such attention as is requisite in a long train of gradation?, 
or impatient of delay, lightly cast their eyes on, or wholly pass by, the proofs : 
and so without making out the demonstration, determine of the agreement 
or disagreement of two ideas as it were by a view of them as they are at a 



428 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

distance, and take it to be the one or the other, as seems most likely to them 
upon such a loose survey. This faculty of the mind, when it is exercised 
immediately about things, is called judgment ; when about truths delivered in 
words, is most commonly called assent or dissent : which being the most 
usual way wherein the mind has occasion to employ this faculty, I shall under 
these terms treat of it, as least liable in our language to equivocation. 

Sect. 4. Judgment is the presuming things to be so, without perceiving 
it. — Thus the mind has two faculties, conversant about truth and falsehood. 

First, Knowledge, whereby it certainly perceives, and is undoubtedly satis- 
fied of, the agreement or disagreement of any ideas. 

Secondly, Judgment, which is the putting ideas together, or separating 
them from one another in the mind, when their certain agreement or disa- 
greement is not perceived, but presumed to be so ; which is, as the word im- 
ports, taken to be so before it certainly appears. And if it so unites,, or 
separates them, as in reality things are, it is right judgment. 



CHAPTER XV. 

OF PROBABILITY. 

Sect. 1. Probability is the appearance of agreement upon fallible 
proofs. — As demonstration is the showing the agreement or disagreement of 
two ideas, by the intervention of one or more proofs, which have a constant, 
immutable, and visible connexion one with another ; so probability is nothing 
but the appearance of such an agreement or disagreement, by the interven- 
tion of proofs, whose connexion is not constant and immutable, or at least is 
not perceived to be so, but is or appears for the most part to be so, and is 
enough to induce the mind to judge the proposition to be true or false, rather 
than the contrary. For example : in the demonstration of it a man per- 
ceives the certain immutable connexion there is of equality between the 
three angles of a triangle, and those intermediate ones which are made use 
of to show their equality to two right ones ; and so by an intuitive knowledge 
of the agreement or disagreement of the intermediate ideas in each step of 
the progress, the whole series is continued with an evidence which clearly 
shows the agreement or disagreement of those three angles in equality to 
two right ones : and thus he has certain knowledge that it is so. But another 
man, who never took the pains to observe the demonstration, hearing a 
mathematician, a man of credit, affirm the three angles of a triangle to be 
equal to two right ones, assents to it, i. e. receives it for true. In which case 
the foundation of his assent is the probability of the thing, the proof being 
such as for the most part carries truth with it : the man on whose testimony 
he receives it not being wont to affirm any thing contrary to, or besides hie 
knowledge, especially in matters of this kind. So that that which causes 
his assent to this proposition, that the three angles of a triangle are equal tc 
two right ones, that which makes him take these ideas to agree, without 
knowing them to do so, is the wonted veracity of the speaker in other cases, 
or his supposed veracity in this. 

Sect. 2. It is to supply the want of knowledge. — Our knowledge, as has- 
been shown, being very narrow, and we not happy enough to find certain 
truth in every thing which we have occasion to consider ; most of the pro- 
positions we think, reason, discourse, nay act upon, are such, as we cannot 
have undoubted knowledge of their truth : yet some of them border so near 
upon certainty, that we make no doubt at all about them ; but assent to them 
as firmly, and act, according to that assent, as resolutely, as if they were 
infallibly demonstrated, and that our knowledge of them was perfect and cer- 
tain. But there being degrees herein from the very neighbourhood of cer- 



Ch. 15. PROBABILITY. 429 

tainty and demonstration, quite down to improbability and unlikeness, even 
to the confines of impossibility ; and also degrees of assent from full assurance 
and confidence, quite down to conjecture, doubt, and distrust : I shall come 
now (having, as I think, found out the bounds of human knowledge and cer- 
tainty), in the next place, to consider the several degrees and grounds of pro- 
bability, and assent or faith. 

Sect. 3. Being that which makes us presume things to be true before we 
know them to be so. — Probability is likeliness to be true, the very notation 
of the word signifying such a proposition, for which there be arguments or 
proofs to make it pass or be received for true. The entertainment the mind 
gives to this sort of propositions is called belief, assent, or opinion, which is 
the admitting or receiving any proposition for true, upon arguments or proofs 
that are found to persuade us to receive it as true, without certain knowledge 
that it is so. And herein lies the difference between probability and certainty, 
faith and knowledge, that in all the parts of knowledge there is intuition ; 
each immediate idea, each step has its visible and certain connexion ; in 
belief, not so. That which makes me believe something extraneous to the 
thing I believe; something not evidently joined on both sides to, and so not 
manifestly showing the agreement or disagreement of those ideas that are 
under consideration. 

Sect. 4. The grounds of probability are two : conformity with our own 
experience, or the testimony of others' experience. — Probability, then, being 
to supply the defect of our knowledge, and to guide us where that fails, is 
always conversant about propositions, whereof we have no certainty, but only 
some inducements to receive them for true. The grounds of it are, in short, 
these two following : 

First, The conformity of any thing with our own knowledge, observation, 
and experience. 

Secondly, The testimony of others, vouching their observation and expe- 
rience. In the testimony of others is to be considered, 1. The number. 
2. The integrity. 3. The skill of the witnesses. 4. The design of the 
author, where it is a testimony out of a book cited. 5. The consistency of 
the parts and circumstances of the relation. 6. Contrary testimonies. 

Sect. 5. In this all the arguments pro and con. ought to be examined 
before we come to a judgment. — Probability wanting that intuitive evidence, 
which infallibly determines the understanding, and produces certain know- 
ledge, the mind, if it would proceed rationally, ought to examine all the 
grounds of probability, and see how they make more or less for or against 
any proposition, before it assents to, or dissents from it ; and upon a due 
balancing the whole, reject or receive it with a more or less firm assent, pro- 
portionally to the preponderancy of the greater grounds of probability on 
one side or the other. For example : 

If I myself see a man walk on the ice, it is past probability, it is know- 
ledge ; but if another tells me he saw a man in England, in the midst of a 
sharp winter, walk upon water hardened with cold ; this has so great con- 
formity with what is usually observed to happen, that I am disposed by the 
nature of the thing itself to assent to it, unless some manifest suspicion 
attend the relation of that matter of fact. But if the same thing be told to 
one born between the tropics, who never saw nor heard of any such thing 
before, there the whole probability relies on testimony : and as the relators 
are more in number, and of more credit, and have no interest to speak con- 
trary to the truth ; so that matter of fact is like to find more or less belief. 
Though to a man, whose experience has been always quite contrary, and who 
has never heard of any thing like it, the most untainted credit of a witness 
will scarce be able to find belief. As it happened to a Dutch ambassador, 
who entertaining the king of Siam with the particularities of Holland, which 
he was inquisitive after, among other things told him, that the wacer in his 
country would sometimes, in cold weather, be so hard, that men walked upon 
it, and that it would bear an elephant if he were there. To which the king 



430 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4, 

replied, " Hitherto I have believed the strange things you have told me, be- 
cause I looked upon you as a sober, fair man ; but now I am sure you lie." 

Sect. 6. They being capable of great variety. — Upon these grounds de- 
pends the probability of any proposition : and as the conformity of our know- 
ledge, as the certainty of observations, as the frequency and constancy of 
experience, and the number and credibility of testimonies, do more or lesy 
agree or disagree with it, so is any proposition in itself more or less probable. 
There is another, I confess, which, though by itself it be no true ground of 
probability, yet is often made use of for one, by which men most commonly 
regulate their assent, and upon which they pin their faith more than any 
thing else, and that is the opinion of others : though there cannot be a more 
dangerous thing to rely on, nor more likely to mislead one ; since there is 
much more falsehood and error among men than truth and knowledge. And 
if the opinions and persuasions of others, whom we know and think well of. 
be a ground of assent, men have reason to be Heathens in Japan, Maho- 
metans in Turkey, Papists in Spain, Protestants in England, and Lutherans 
in Sweden. But of this wrong ground of assent I shall have occasion to 
speak more at large in another place. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

OF THE DEGREES OF ASSENT. 

Sect. 1. Our assent ought to be regulated by the grounds of probability. 
— The grounds of probability we have laid down in the foregoing chapter ; 
as they are the foundations on which our assent is built, so they are also the 
measure whereby its several degrees are or ought to be regulated : only we 
are to take notice, that whatever grounds of probability there may be, they 
yet operate no farther on the mind, which searches after truth, and endeavours 
to judge right, than they appear : at least in the first judgment or search that. 
the mind makes. I confess, in the opinions men have, and firmly stick to, in 
the world, their assent is not always from an actual view of the reasons that. 
at first prevailed with them ; it being in many cases almost impossible, and 
in most very hard, even for those who have very admirable memories, to retain 
ail the proofs which upon a due examination, made them embrace that side of 
the question. It suffices that they have once with care and fairness sifted the 
matter as far they could, and that they have searched into all the particulars 
that they could imagine to give any light to the question, and with the best 
of their skill cast up the account upon the whole evidence ; and thus, having 
once found on which side the probability appeared to them, after as full and 
exact an inquiry as they can make, they lay up the conclusion in their memo- 
ries as a truth they have discovered ; and for the future they remain satisfied 
with the testimony of their memories, that this is the opinion that, by the 
proofs they have once seen of it, deserves such a degree of their assent ps 
they afford it. 

Sect. 2. These cannot always be actually in view, and then we must con- 
tent ourselves with the remembrance that we once saw ground for such a 
degree of assent. — This is all that the greatest part of men are capable of 
doing, in regulating their opinions and judgments ; unless a man will exact 
of them either to retain distinctly in their memories all the proofs concerning 
any probable truth, and that too in the same order and regular deduction of 
consequences in which they have formerly placed or seen them, which some- 
times is enough to fill a large volume on one single question ; or else they 
must require a man, for every opinion that he embraces, every day to examine 
the proofs ; both which are impossible. It is unavoidable therefore that the 
memory be relied on in the case, and that men be persuaded of severai 



Ch. 16, DEGREES OP ASSENT. 431 

opinions, whereof the proofs are not actually in their thoughts ; nay, which 
perhaps they are not able actually to recall. Without this the greatest part 
of men must be either very sceptics, or change every moment, and yield 
themselves up to whoever, having lately studied the question, offers them 
arguments, which, for want of memory, they are not able presently to answer. 

Sect. 3. The ill consequence of this, if our former judgments were not 
rightly made.— -I cannot but own, that men's sticking to their past judgment, 
and adhering firmly to conclusions formerly made, is often the cause of great 
obstinacy in error and mistake. But the fault is not that they rely on their 
memories for what they have before well judged, but because they judged be- 
fore they had well examined. May we not find a great number (not to say 
the greatest part) of men that think they have formed right judgments of 
several matters, and that for no other reason but because they never thought 
otherwise ] who imagine themselves to have judged right only because they 
never questioned, never examined their own opinions ) Which is indeed to 
think they judged right because they never judged at all : and yet these of 
all men hold their opinions with the greatest stiffness ; those being generally 
the most fierce and firm in their tenets who have least examined them. What 
we once know, we are certain is so ; and we may be secure that there are 
no latent proofs undiscovered, which may overturn our knowledge or bring it 
in doubt. But, in matters of probability, it is not in every case we can be 
sure that we have all the particulars before us that any way concern the 
question ; and that there is no evidence behind, and yet unseen, which may 
cast the probability on the other side, and outweigh all that at present seems 
to preponderate with us. Who almost is there that hath the leisure, patience, 
and means, to collect together all the proofs concerning most of the opinions 
he has, so as safely to conclude that he hath a clear and full view, and that 
there is no more to be alleged for his better information 1 And yet we are 
forced to determine ourselves on the one side or other. The conduct of our 
lives, and the management of our great concerns, will not bear delay : for 
those depend, for the most part, on the determination of our judgment in 
points wherein we are not capable of certain and demonstrative knowledge, 
and wherein it is necessary for us to embrace the one side or the other. 

Sect. 4. The right use of it, is mutual charity and forbearance. — Since 
therefore it is unavoidable to the greatest part of men, if not all, to have 
several opinions without certain and indubitable proofs of their truth, and it 
carries too great an imputation of ignorance, lightness, or folly, for men to 
quit and renounce their former tenets presently upon the offer of an argument 
which they cannot immediately answer, and show the insufficiency of; it 
would methinks become all men to maintain peace, and the common offices 
of humanity and friendship, in the diversity of opinions ; since we cannot 
reasonably expect that any one should readily and obsequiously quit his own 
opinion, and embrace ours with a blind resignation to an authority which the 
understanding of man acknowledges not. For however it may often mistake, 
it can own no other guide but reason, nor blindly submit to the will and dic- 
tates of another. If he, you would bring over to your sentiments, be one that 
examines before he assents, you must give him leave at his leisure to go over 
the account again, and, recalling what is out of his mind, examine all the 
particulars, to see on which side the advantage lies : and if he will not think 
our arguments of weight enough to engage him anew in so much pains, it is 
but what we often do ourselves in the like case ; and we should take it amiss 
if others should prescribe to us what points we should study. And if he be 
one who takes his opinions upon trust, how can we imagine that he should 
renounce those tenets which time and custom have so settled in his mind, 
that he thinks them self-evident, and of an unquestionable certainty ; or 
which he takes to be impressions he has received from God himself, or from 
men sent by him 1 How can we expect, I say, that opinions thus settled 
should be given up to the arguments or authority of a stranger or adversary ; 
especially if there be any suspicion of interest or design, as there never fails 



432 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

to be where men find themselves ill treated 1 We should do well to com 
miserate our mutual ignorance, and endeavour to remove it in all the gentle 
and fair ways of information ; and not instantly treat others ill, as obstinate 
and perverse, because they will not renounce their own, and receive our 
opinions, or at least those we would force upon them, when it is more than 
probable that we are no less obstinate in not embracing some of theirs. For 
where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he 
holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns ; or can say, that he has ex- 
amined to the bottom of his own or other men's opinions 1 The necessity 
of believing without knowledge, nay, often upon very slight grounds, in this 
fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy 
and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others. At least those who 
have not thoroughly examined to the bottom all their own tenets, must con- 
fess they are unfit to prescribe to others ; and are unreasonable in imposing 
that as truth on other men's belief which they themselves have not searched 
into, nor weighed the arguments of probability on which they should receive 
or reject it. Those who have fairly and truly examined, and are thereby got 
past doubt in all the doctrines they profess and govern themselves by, would 
have a juster pretence to require others to follow them : but these are so few 
in number, and find so little reason to be magisterial in their opinions, that 
nothing insolent and imperious is to be expected from them : and there is 
reason to think that, if men were better instructed themselves, they would 
be less imposing on others. 

Sect. 5. Probability is either of matter of fact or speculation. — But to 
return to the grounds of assent, and the several degrees of it; we are to 
take notice, that the propositions we receive upon inducements of probability 
are of two sorts ; either concerning some particular existence, or, as it is 
usually termed, matter of fact, which falling under observation, is capable of 
human testimony ; or else concerning things which, being beyond the disco- 
very of our senses, are not capable of any such testimony. 

Sect. 6. The concurrent experience of all other men with ours produces 
assurance approaching to knowledge. — Concerning the first of these, viz. 
particular matter of fact. 

First, Where any particular thing, consonant to the constant observation of 
ourselves and others in the like case, comes attested by the concurrent reports 
of all that mention it, we receive it as easily, and build as firmly upon it, as 
if it were certain knowledge ; and we reason and act thereupon with as little 
doubt as if it were perfect demonstration. Thus, if all Englishmen who 
have occasion to mention it, should affirm that it froze in England the last 
winter, or that there were swallows seen there in the summer ; I think a man 
could almost as little doubt of it as that seven and four are eleven. The first, 
therefore, and highest degree of probability is, when the general consent of all 
men, in all ages, as far as it can be known, concurs with a man's constant 
and never-failing experience in like cases, to confirm the truth of any par- 
ticular matter of fact attested by fair witnesses : such are all the stated con- 
stitutions and properties of bodies, and the regular proceedings of causes and 
effects in the ordinary course of nature. This we call an argument from the 
nature of things themselves. For what our own and other men's constant 
observation has found always to be after the same manner, that we with 
reason conclude to be the effect of steady and regular causes, though they 
come not within the reach of our knowledge. Thus, that fire warmed a man. 
made lead fluid, and changed the colour or consistency in wood or charcoal ; 
that iron sunk in water, and swam in quicksilver : these and the like propo- 
sitions about particular facts, being agreeable to our constant experience, as 
often as we have to do with these matters ; and being generally spoke of 
(when mentioned by others) as things found constantly to be so, and therefore 
not so much as controverted by any body ; we are put past doubt, that a 
relation affirming any such thing to have been, or any predication that it will 
happen again in the same manner, is very true. These probabilities rise so 



Ch. 16. DEGREES OF ASSENT. 433 

near to a certainty, that they govern our thoughts as absolutely, and influence 
all our actions as fully, as the most evident demonstration ; and, in what con- 
cerns us, we make little or no difference between them and certain know- 
ledge. Our belief, thus grounded, rises to assurance. 

Sect. 7. Unquestionable testimony and experience for the most part pro- 
duce confidence. — Secondly, The next degree of probability is, when I find 
by my own experience, and the agreement of all others that mention it, a 
thing to be, for the most part, so ; and that the particular instance of it is 
'attested by many and undoubted witnesses, v. g. history giving us such an 
account of men in all ages, and my own experience, as far as I had an oppor- 
tunity to observe, confirming it, that most men prefer their private advantage 
to the public ; if all historians that write of Tiberius say that Tiberius did 
so, it is extremely probable. And in this case our assent has a sufficient 
foundation to raise itself to a degree which we may call confidence. 

Sect. 8. Fair testimony, and the nature of the thing indifferent, produce 
also confident belief. — Thirdly, In things that happen indifferently, as that a 
bird should fly this or that way ; that it should thunder on a man's right or 
left hand, &c. when any particular matter of fact is vouched by the concur- 
rent testimony of unsuspected witnesses, there our assent is also unavoidable. 
Thus, that there is such a city in Italy as Rome ; that, about one thousand seven 
hundred years ago, there lived in it a man called Julius Caesar ; that he was 
a general, and that he won a battle against another, called Pompey : this, 
though in the nature of the thing there be nothing for nor against it, yet being 
related by historians of credit, and contradicted by no one writer, a man can- 
not avoid believing it, and can as little doubt of it as he does of the being 
and actions of his own acquaintance, whereof he himself is a witness. 

Sect. 9. Experiences and testimonies clashing, infinitely vary the de- 
grees of probability. — Thus far the matter goes easy enough. Probability 
upon such grounds carries so much evidence with it, that it naturally deter- 
mines the judgment, and leaves us as little liberty to believe or disbelieve, as a 
demonstration does whether we will know or be ignorant. The difficulty is, 
when testimonies contradict common experience, and the reports of history 
and witnesses clash with the ordinary course of nature, or with one another ; 
there it is where diligence, attention, and exactness are required, to form a 
right judgment, and to proportion the assent to the different evidence and 
probability of the thing ; which rises and falls according as those two foun- 
dations of credibility, viz. common observation in like cases, and particular 
testimonies in that particular instance, favour or contradict it. These are 
liable to so great a variety of contrary observations, circumstances, reports, 
different qualifications, tempers, designs, oversights, &c. of the reporters, 
that it is impossible to reduce to precise rules the various degrees wherein 
men give their assent. This only may be said in general, that as the argu- 
ments and proofs pro and con., upon due examination, nicely weighing every 
particular circumstance, shall to any one appear upon the whole matter, in a 
greater or less degree to preponderate on either side ; so they are fitted to 
produce in the mind such different entertainment as we call belief, conjecture, 
guess, doubt, wavering, distrust, disbelief, &c 

Sect. 10. Traditional testimonies, the farther removed, the less their 
proofs. — This is what concerns assent in matters wherein testimony is made 
use of: concerning which, I think, it may not be amiss to take notice of a 
rule observed in the law of England ; which is, that though the attested copy 
of a record be good proof, yet the copy of a copy, ever so well attested, and 
by ever so credible witnesses, will not be admitted as a proof in judicature. 
This is so generally approved as reasonable, and suited to the wisdom and 
caution to be used in our inquiry after material truths, that I never yet heard 
of any one that blamed it. This practice, if it be allowable in the decisions 
of right and wrong, carries this observation along with it, viz. that any testi- 
mony, the farther off it is from the original truth, the less force and proof it 
has. The being and existence of the thing itself is what I call the original 
3E 



434 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4 

truth. A credible man vouching 1 his knowledge of it is a good proof: but if 
another equally credible do witness it from his report, the testimony is 
weaker ; and a third that attests the hearsay of an hearsay, is yet less con- 
siderable. So that, in traditional truths, each remove weakens the force ot 
the proof: and the more hands the tradition has successively passed through, 
the less strength and evidence does it receive from them. This I thought 
necessary to be taken notice of, because I find among some men the quite 
contrary commonly practised, who look on opinions to gain force by growing 
older; and what a thousand years since would not, to a rational man, con- 
temporary with the first voucher, have appeared at all probable, is now urged 
as certain beyond all question, only because several have since, from him, 
said it one after another. Upon this ground, propositions, evidently false, or 
doubtful enough in their first beginning, come by an inverted rule of proba- 
bility, to pass for authentic truths ; and those which found or deserved little 
credit from the mouths of their first authors, are thought to grow venerable 
by age, and are urged as undeniable. 

Sect. 11. — Yet history is of great use. — I would not be thought here to 
lessen the credit and use of history ; it is all the light we have in many cases, 
and we receive from it a great part of the useful truths we have, with a con- 
vincing evidence. I think nothing more valuable than the records of an- 
tiquity ; I wish we had more of them, and more uncorrupted. But this truth 
itself forces me to say, that no probability can arise higher than its first 
original. What has no other evidence than the single testimony of one oDly 
witness, must stand or fall by his only testimony, whether good, bad, or indif- 
ferent ; and though cited afterward by hundreds of others, one after another, 
is so far from receiving any strength thereby, that it is only the weaker. 
Passion, interest, inadvertency, mistake of his meaning 1 , and a thousand odd 
reasons, or capricios, men's minds are acted by (impossible to be discovered) 
may make one man quote another man's words or meaning wrong". He that 
has but ever so little examined the citations of writers cannot doubt how little 
credit the quotations deserve, where the originals are wanting; and conse- 
quently how much less quotations of quotations can be relied on. This is 
certain, that what in one age was affirmed upon slight grounds, can never 
after come to be more valid in future ages by being often repeated. But the 
farther still it is from the original, the less valid it is, and has always less 
force in the mouth or writing of him that last made use of it, than in his from 
whom he received it. 

Sect. 12. In tilings which sense cannot discover, analogy is the great 
rule of probability.— The probabilities we have hitherto mentioned are only 
such as concern matter of fact, and such things as are capable of observation 
and testimony. There remains that other sort, concerning which men enter- 
tain opinions with variety of assent, though the things be such that, falling 
not under the reach of our senses, they are not capable of testimony. Such 
are, 1. The existence, nature, and operations of finite immaterial beings 
without us ; as spirits, angels, devils, &c. or the existence of material beings, 
which, either for their smallness in themselves, or remoteness from us, our 
senses cannot take notice of; as whether there be any plants, animals, and 
intelligent inhabitants in the planets, and other mansions of the vast universe. 
2. Concerning the manner of operation in most parts of the works of nature : 
wherein, though we see the sensible effects, yet their causes are unknown, 
and we perceive not the ways and manner how they are produced. We see 
animals are generated, nourished, and move ; the loadstone draws iron ; and 
the parts of a candle, successively melting, turn into flame, and give us both 
light and heat. These and the like effects we see and know ; but the causes 
that operate, and the manner they are produced in, we can only guess, and 
probably conjecture. For these and the like, coming not within the scrutiny 
of human senses, cannot be examined by them, or be attested by any body ; 
and therefore can appear more or less probable, only as they more or less 
agree to truths that are established in our minds, and as they hold proportion 



Ch. 16. DEGREES OF ASSENT. 435 

to other parts of our knowledge and observation. Analogy in these matters 
is the only help we have, and it is from that alone we draw all our grounds 
of probability. Thus observing that the bare rubbing of two bodies violently 
one upon another produces heat, and very often fire itself, we have reason to 
think that what we call heat and fire consists in a violent agitation of the 
imperceptible minute parts of the burning matter : observing likewise that 
the different refractions of pellucid bodies produce in our eyes the different 
appearances of several colours, and also that the different ranging and laying 
the superficial parts of several bodies, as of velvet, watered silk, &c. does 
the like, we think it probable that the colour and shining of bodies is in them 
nothing but the different arrangement and refraction of their minute and 
insensible parts. Thus finding in all parts of the creation, that fall under 
human observation, that there is a gradual connexion of one with another, 
without any great or discernible gaps between, in all that great variety of 
things we see in the world, which are so closely linked together, that in the 
several ranks of beings it is not easy to discover the bounds betwixt them : 
we have reason to be persuaded, that by such gentle steps things ascend up- 
wards in degrees of perfection. It is a hard matter to say where sensible 
and rational begin, and where insensible and irrational end : and who is there 
quick-sighted enough to determine precisely which is the lowest species of 
living things, and which is the first of those which have no life ! Things, 
as far as we can observe, lessen and augment as the quantity does in a regular 
cone ; where, though there be a manifest odds betwixt the bigness of the 
diameter at a remote distance, yet the difference between the upper and 
under, where they touch one another, is hardly discernible. The difference 
is exceeding great between some men and some animals ; but if we will 
compare the understanding and abilities of some men and some brutes, we 
shall find so little difference, that it will be hard to say, that that of the man 
is either clearer or larger. Observing, I say, such gradual and gentle de- 
scents downwards in those parts of the creation that are beneath man, the 
rule of analogy may make it probable, that it is so also in things above us 
and our observation ; and that there are several ranks of intelligent beings, 
excelling us in several degrees of perfection, ascending upwards towards the 
infinite perfection of the Creator, by gentle steps and differences, that are 
every one at no great distance from the next to it. This sort of probability, 
which is the best conduct of rational experiments, and the rise of hypothesis, 
has also its use and influence : and a wary reasoning from analogy leads us 
often into the discovery of truths and useful productions which would other- 
wise lie concealed. 

Sect. 13. One case where contrary experience lessens not the testi- 
mony. — Though the common experience and the ordinary course of things 
have justly a mighty influence on the minds of men, to make them give or 
refuse credit to any thing proposed to their belief; yet there is one case, 
wherein the strangeness of the fact lessens not the assent to a fair testimony 
given of it. For where such supernatural events are suitable to ends aimed 
at by him, who has the power to change the course of nature, there, under 
such circumstances, they may be fitter to procure belief, by how much the 
more they are beyond or contrary to ordinary observation. This is the 
proper case of miracles, which well attested do not only find credit them- 
selves, but give it also to other truths, which need such confirmation. 

Sect. 14. The bare testimony of revelation is the highest certainty. — 
Besides those we have hitherto mentioned, there is one sort of propositions 
that challenge the highest degree of our assent upon bare testimony, whether 
the thing proposed agree or disagree with common experience, and the ordi- 
nary course of things, or no. The reason whereof is, because the testimony 
is of such an one as cannot deceive, nor be deceived, and that is of God 
himself. This carries with it an assurance beyond doubt, evidence beyond 
exception. This is called by a peculiar name, revelation ; and our assent to 
it, faith- which as absolutely determines our minds, and as perfectly excludes 



436 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

all wavering-, as our knowledge itself; and we may as well doubt of our own 
being-, as we can whether any revelation from God be true. So that faith is 
a settled and sure principle of a c sent and assurance, and leaves no manner 
of room for doubt or hesitation. Only we must be sure that it be a divine 
revelation, and that we understand it right : else we shall expose ourselves 
to all the extravagancy of enthusiasm, and all the error of wrong principles, 
f we have faith and assurance in what is not divine revel a.tion. And there- 
fore in those cases, our assent can be rationally no higher than the evidence 
of its being a revelation, and that this is the meaning of the expressions it 
is delivered in. If the evidence of its being a revelation, or that this is its 
true sense, be only on probable proofs ; our assent can reach no higher than 
an assurance or diffidence, arising from the more or less apparent probability 
of the proofs. But of faith, and the precedency it ought to have before other 
arguments of persuasion, I shall speak more hereafter, where I treat of it as 
it is ordinarily placed, in contradistinction to reason ; though in truth it be 
nothing- else but an assent founded on the highest reason. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

OF REASON. 

Sect. 1. Various significations of the word reason. — The word reason 
in the English language has different significations : sometimes it is taken 
for true and clear principles ; sometimes for clear and fair deductions from 
those principles ; and sometimes for the cause, and particularly the final 
cause. But the consideration I shall have of it here is in signification dif- 
ferent from all these ; and that is, as it stands for a faculty in man, that 
faculty whereby man is supposed to be distinguished from beasts, and wherein 
it is evident he much surpasses them. 

Sect. 2. Wherein reasoning consists. — If general knowledge, as has 
been shown, consists in a perception of the agreement or disagreement of 
our own ideas ; and the knowledge of the existence of all things without us- 
(except only of a God, whose existence every man may certainly know and 
demonstrate to himself from his own existence) be had only by our senses : 
what room is there for the exercise of any other faculty, but outward sense 
and inward perception 1 What need is there of reason ] Very much ; both 
for the enlargement of our knowledge, and regulating our assent : for it hath 
to do both in knowledge and opinion, and is necessary and assisting to all 
our other intellectual faculties, and indeed contains two of them, viz. sagacity 
and illation. By the one, it finds out ; and by the other, it so orders the in- 
termediate ideas, as to discover what connexion there is in each link of the 
chain, whereby the extremes are held together ; and thereby, as it were, to 
draw into view the truth sought for, which is that which we call illation or 
inference, and consists in nothing- but the perception of the connexion there 
is between the ideas, in each step of the deduction, whereby the mind comes 
to see either the certain agreement or disagreement of any two ideas, as in 
demonstration, in which it arrives at knowledge; or their probable connexion, 
on which it gives or withholds its assent, as in opinion. Sense and intuition 
reach but a very little way. The greatest part of our knowledge depends 
upon deductions and intermediate ideas : and in those cases, where we are 
fain to substitute assent instead of knowledge, and take propositions for true, 
without being certain that they are so, we have need to find out, examine, 
and compare the grounds of their probability. In both these cases, the fa- 
culty which finds out the means, and rightly applies them to discover certainty 
m the one, and probability in the other, is that which we call reason. For 
as reason perceives the necessary and indubitable connexion of all the ideas 



Ch. 17. REASON. 437 

or proofs one to another, in each step of any demonstration that produces 
knowledge ; so it likewise perceives the probable connexion of all the ideas 
or proofs one to another, in every step of a discourse, to which it will think 
assent due. This is the lowest degree of that which can be truly called rea- 
son. For where the mind does not perceive this probable connexion ; where 
it does not discern whether there be any such connexion or no ; there men's 
opinions are not the product of judgment, or the consequence of reason, but 
the effects of chance and hazard, of a mind floating at all adventures, with- 
out choice and without direction. 

Sect. 3. Its four parts. — So that we may in reason consider these four 
degrees ; the first and highest is the discovering and finding out of truths ; 
the second, the regular and methodical disposition of them, and laying them 
in a clear and fit order, to make their connexion and force be plainly and 
easily perceived ; the third is the perceiving their conrexion ; and the fourth, 
a making a right conclusion. These several degrees may be observed in any 
mathematical demonstration ; it being one thing to perceive the connexion 
of each part, as the demonstration is made by another ; another, to perceive 
the dependence of the conclusion on all the parts ; a third, to make out a 
demonstration clearly and neatly one's self; and something different from all 
these, to have first found out these intermediate ideas or proofs by which it 
is made. 

Sect. 4. Syllogism not the great instrument of reason. — There is one 
thing more, which I shall desire to be considered concerning reason ; and 
that is, whether syllogism, as is generally thought, be the proper instrument 
of it, and the most useful way of exercising this faculty. The causes I have 
to doubt are these : 

First, Because syllogism serves our reason but in one only of the foremen- 
tioned parts of it ; and that is, to show the connexion of the proofs in any 
one instance, and no more : but in this it is of no great use, since the mind 
can conceive such connexion where it really is, as easily, nay, perhaps better, 
without it. 

If we will observe the actings of our own minds, we shall find that we 
reason best and clearest when we only observe the connexion of the proof, 
without reducing our thoughts to any rule of syllogism. And therefore we 
may take notice, that there are many men that reason exceeding clear and 
rightly, who know not how to make a syllogism. He that will look into 
many parts of Asia and America, will find men reason there perhaps as 
acutely as himself, who yet never heard of a syllogism, nor can reduce any 
one argument to those forms : and I believe scarce any one makes syllogisms 
in reasoning within himself. Indeed, syllogism is made use of on occasion, 
to discover a fallacy hid in a rhetorical flourish, or cunningly wrapt up in a 
smooth period ; and, stripping an absurdity of the cover of wit and good 
language, show it in its naked deformity. But the weakness or fallacy of 
such a loose discourse it shows, by the artificial form it is put into, only to 
those who have thoroughly studied mode and figure, and have so examined 
the many ways that three propositions may be put together, as to know 
which of them does certainly conclude right, and which not, and upon what 
grounds it is that they do so. All who have so far considered syllogism, as 
to see the reason why in three propositions laid together in one form the 
conclusion will be certainly right, but in another, not certainly so ; I grant 
are certain of the conclusion they draw from the premises in the allowed 
modes and figures. But they who have not so far looked into those forms, 
are not sure, by virtue of syllogism, that the conclusion certainly follows 
from the premises ; they only take it to be so by an implicit faith in their 
teachers, and a confidence in those forms of argumentation ; but this is still 
jut believing, not being certain. Now if, of all mankind, those who can 
make syllogisms are extremely few in comparison of those who cannot; and 
if, of those few who have been taught logic, there is but a very small number 
r vho do any more than believe that syllogisms in the allowed modes and 



438 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

figures do conclude right, without knowing certainly that they do so ; if syl- 
logisms must be taken for the only proper instrument of reason and means 
of knowledge ; it will follow, that before Aristotle there was not one man 
that did or could know any thing by reason ; and that since the invention of 
syllogisms, there is not one of ten thousand that doth. 

But God has not been so sparing tc men to make them barely two-legged 
creatures, and left it to Aristotle to make them rational, i. e. those few of 
them that he could get so to examine the grounds of syllogisms, as to see, 
that in above threescore ways, that three propositions may be laid together, 
there are but about fourteen wherein one may be sure that the conclusion is 
right ; and upon what grounds it is, that in these few the conclusion is cer- 
tain, and in the other not. God has been more bountiful to mankind than 
so. He has given them a mind that can reason, without being instructed in 
methods of syllogizing: the understanding is not taught to reason by these 
rules ; it has a native faculty to perceive the coherence or incoherence of its 
ideas, and can range them right, without any such perplexing repetitions. I 
say not this any way to lessen Aristotle, whom I look on as one of the 
greatest men among the ancients ; whose large views, acuteness, and pene- 
tration of thought, and strength of judgment, few have equalled : and who 
in tins very invention of forms of argumentation, wherein the conclusion 
may be shown to be rightly inferred, did great service against those who 
were not ashamed to deny any thing. And I readily own, that all right 
reasoning may be reduced to his forms of syllogism. But yet I think, without 
any diminution to him, I may truly say, that they are not the only, nor the 
best way of reasoning, for the leading of those into truth who are willing to 
find it, and desire to make the best use they may of their reason, for the 
attainment of knowledge. And he himself, it is plain ; found out some forms 
to be conclusive, and others not, not by the forms themselves, but by the 
original way of knowledge, i. e. by the visible agreement of ideas. Tell a 
country gentlewoman that the wind is southwest, and the weather lowering, 
and like to rain, and she will easily understand it is not safe for her to go 
abroad thin clad, in such a day, after a fever : she clearly sees the probable 
connexion of all these, viz. southwest wind, and clouds, rain, wetting, taking 
cold, relapse, and danger of death, without tying them together in those arti- 
ficial and cumbersome fetters of several syllogisms, that clog and hinder the 
mind, which proceeds from one part to another quicker and clearer without 
them ; and the probability which she easily perceives in things thus in their 
native state would be quite lost, if this argument were managed learnedly, 
and proposed in mode and figure. For it very often confounds the con- 
nexion : and, I think, every one will perceive in mathematical demonstra- 
tions, that the knowledge gained thereby comes shortest and clearest without 
syllogisms. 

Inference is looked on as the great act of the rational faculty, and so it is 
when it is rightly made ; but the mind, either very desirous to enlarge its 
knowledge, or very apt to favour the sentiments it has once imbibed, is very 
forward to make inferences, and therefore often makes too much haste, be- 
fore it perceives the connexion of the ideas that must hold the extremes 
together. 

To infer is nothing but, by virtue of one proposition laid down as true, to draw 
in another as true, i. e. to see or suppose such a connexion of the two ideas 
of the inferred proposition, v. g. let this be the proposition laid down, 
" men shall be punished in another world," and from thence be inferred this 
other, " then men can determine themselves." The question now is to know 
whether the mind has made this inference right or no; if it has made it by 
finding out the intermediate ideas, and taken a view of the connexion of 
them, placed in a due order, it has proceeded rationally, and made a right 
inference. If it has done it without such a view, it has not so much made 
an inference that will hold, or an inference of right reason, as shown a wil- 
lingness to have it be, or be taken for such. But in neither case is it syllo- 



Ch. 17. REASON. 439 

g)sm that discovered those ideas, or showed the connexion of them, for they 
mast be both found out, and the connexion every where perceived, before 
they can rationally be made use of in syllogism ; unless it can be said, that 
any idea, without considering what connexion it hath with the two other, 
whose agreement should be shown by it, will do well enough in a syllogism, 
and may be taken at a venture for the medius terminus, to prove any con- 
clusion. But this nobody will say, because it is by virtue of the perceived 
agreement of the intermediate idea with the extremes, that the extremes are 
concluded to agree ; and therefore each intermediate idea must be such as in 
the whole chain hath a visible connexion with those two it has been placed 
between, or else thereby the conclusion cannot be inferred or drawn in : for 
wherever any link of the chain is loose, and without connexion, there the 
whole strength of it is lost, and it hath no force to infer or draw in any 
thing. In the instance above mentioned, what is it shows the force of the 
inference, and consequently the reasonableness of it, but a view of the con- 
nexion of all the intermediate ideas that draw in the conclusion or proposi- 
tion inferred'? v. g. men shall be punished God the punisher -just 

punishment the punished guilty could have done otherwise 

freedom self-determination : by which chain of ideas thus visibly linked 

together in train, i. e. each intermediate idea agreeing on each side with 
those two it is immediately placed between, the ideas of men and self-deter- 
mination appear to be connected, i. e. this proposition, men can determine 
themselves, is drawn in, or inferred from this, that they shall be punished in 
the other world. For here the mind, seeing the connexion there is between 
the idea of men's punishment in the other world and the idea of God's pun- 
ishing ; between God punishing and the justice of the punishment ; between 
justice of the punishment and guilt ; between guilt and the power to do other- 
wise ; between a power to do otherwise and freedom ; and between freedom 
and self-determination ; sees the connexion between men and self-deter- 
mination. 

Now I ask whether the connexion of the extremes be not more clearly 
seen in this simple and natural disposition, than in the perplexed repetitions 
and jumble of five or six syllogisms? I must beg pardon for calling it jumble, 
till somebody shall put these ideas into so many syllogisms, and then say 
that they are less jumbled, and their connexion more visible, when they are 
transposed and repeated, and spun out to a greater length in artificial forms 
than in that short and natural plain order they are laid down in here, wherein 
every one may see it ; and wherein they must be seen before they can be put 
into a train of syllogisms. For the natural order of the connecting ideas 
must direct the order of the syllogisms ; and a man must see the connexion 
of each intermediate idea with those that it connects, before he can with rea- 
son make use of it in a syllogism. And when all those syllogisms are made, 
neither those that are, nor those that are not logicians will see the force of 
the argumentation, i. e. the connexion of the extremes, one jot the better. 
[For those that are not men of art, not knowing the true forms of syllogism, 
nor the reasons of them, cannot know whether they are made in right and 
conclusive modes and figures or no, and so are not at all helped by the forms 
they are put into ; though by them the natural order, wherein the mind could 
judge of their respective connexion, being disturbed, renders the illatation 
much more uncertain than without them.] And as for the logicians themselves, 
they see the connexion of each intermediate idea with those it stands be- 
tween (on which the force of the inference depends) as well before as after 
the syllogism is made, or else they do not see it at all. For a syllogism 
neither shows nor strengthens the connexion of any two ideas immediately 
put together, but only by the connexion seen in them shows what connexion 
the extremes have one with another. But what connexion the intermediate 
has with either of the extremes in that syllogism, that no syllogism does or 
can show. That the mind only doth or can perceive as they stand there in 
that juxta-position only by its own view, to which the syllogistical form it 



440 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

happens to be in gives no heJp or light at all; it only shows that if the inter- 
mediate idea agrees with those it is on both sides immediately applied to, 
then those two remote ones, or as they are called extremes, do certainly 
agree, and therefore the immediate connexion of each idea to that which if. 
is applied to on each side, on which the force of the reasoning depends, is as 
well seen before as after the syllogism is made, or else he that makes the 
syllogism could never see it at all. This, as has been already observed, is 
seen only by the eye, or the perceptive faculty of the mind, taking a view ot 
them laid together in a juxta-position ; which view of any two it has equally, 
whenever they are laid together in any proposition, whether that proposition 
be placed as a major, or a minor in a syllogism or no. 

Of what use then are syllogisms 1 I answer, their chief and main use is in 
the schools, where men are allowed without shame to deny the agreement of 
ideas that do manifestly agree ; or out of the schools, to those who from 
thence have learned without shame to deny the connexion of ideas, which 
even to themselves is visible. But to an ingenious searcher after truth, who 
has no other aim but to find it, there is no need of any such form to force the 
allowing of the inference : the truth and reasonableness of it is better seen in 
ranging of the ideas in a simple and plain order : and hence it is, that men, 
in their own inquiries after truth, never use syllogisms to convince them- 
selves, [or in teaching others to instruct willing learners.] Because, before 
they can put them into a syllogism, they must see the connexion that is be- 
tween the intermediate idea and the two other ideas it is set between and 
applied to, to show their agreement ; and when they see that, they see whe- 
ther the inference be good or no, and so syllogism comes too late to settle 
it. For to make use again of the former instance, I ask whether the mind, 
considering the idea of justice, placed as an intermediate idea between the 
punishment of men and the guilt of the punished, (and, till it does so con- 
sider it, the mind cannot make use of it as a medius terminus) does not as 
plainly see the force and strength of the inference as when it is formed into 
a syllogism 1 To show it in a very plain and easy example ; let animal be 
the intermediate idea of medius terminus that the mind makes use of to show 
the connexion of homo and vivens : I ask, whether the mind does not more 
readily and plainly see that connexion in the simple and proper position of 
the connecting idea in the middle ; thus, 

Homo Animal Vivens. 

than in this perplexed one, 

Animal Vivens Homo Animal : 

which is the position these ideas have in a syllogism, to show the connexion 
between homo and vivens by the intervention of animal. 

Indeed, syllogism is thought to be of necessary use, even to the lovers of 
truth, to show them the fallacies that are often concealed in florid, witty, or 
involved discourses. But that this is a mistake will appear if we consider, 
that the reason why sometimes men, who sincerely aim at truth, are imposed 
upon by such loose, and as they are called, rhetorical discourses, is, that 
their fancies being struck with some lively metaphorical representations, they 
neglect to observe, or do not easily perceive, what are the true ideas upon 
which the inference depends. Now to show such men the weakness of such 
ri.n argumentation, there needs no more but to strip it of the superfluous ideas, 
which, blended and confounded with those on which the inference depends, 
reems to show a connexion where there is none ; or at least to hinder the 
d ; scovery of the want of it ; and then to lay the naked ideas, on which the 
force of the argumentation depends, in their due order, in which position the 
mind, taking a view of them, sees what connexion they have, and so is able 
to judge of the inference without any need of a syllogism at all. 

I grant that mode and figure is commonly made use of in such cases, as if 
the detection of the incoherence of such loose discourses were wholly owing 
to the syllogistical form ; and so I myself formerly thought, till upon a stricter 
examination I now find, that laying the intermediate ideas naked in their 



Ch. 17. REASON. 441 

due order shows the incoherence of the argumentation better than syllogism ; 
not only as subjecting each link of the chain to the immediate view of the 
mind in its proper place, whereby its connexion is best observed ; but also 
because syllogism shows the incoherence only to those (who are not one of 
ten thousand) who perfectly understand mode and figure, and the reason 
upon which those forms are established : whereas a due and orderly placing 
of the ideas upon which the inference is made makes every one, whether 
logician or not logician, who understands the terms, and hath the faculty to 
perceive the agreement or disagreement of such ideas (without which, in or 
out of syllogism, he cannot perceive the strength or weakness, coherence or 
incoherence, of the discourse) see the want of connexion in the argumenta- 
tion, and the absurdity of the inference. 

And thus I have known a man unskilful in syllogism, who at first hearing 
could perceive the weakness and inconclusiveness of a long, artificial, and 
plausible discourse, wherewith others better skilled in syllogism have been 
misled. And I believe there are few of my readers who do not know such. 
And indeed if it were not so, the debates of most princes' counsels, and the 
business of assemblies, would be in danger to be mismanaged, since those 
who are relied upon, and have usually a great stroke in them, are not always 
such who have the good luck to be perfectly knowing in the forms of syllo- 
gism, or expert in mode and figure. And if syllogism were the only or so 
much as the surest way to detect the fallacies of artificial discourses, I do 
not think that all mankind, even princes, in matters that concern their 
crowns and dignities, are so much in love with falsehood and mistake, 
that they would every where have neglected to bring syllogism into the 
debates of moment, or thought it ridiculous so much as to offer them in affairs 
of consequence ; a plain evidence to me, that men of parts and penetration, 
who were not idly to dispute at their ease, but were to act according to the 
result of their debates, and often pay for their mistakes with their heads 
or fortunes, found those scholastic forms were of little use to discover truth 
or fallacy, whilst both the one and the other might be shown, and better 
shown, without them, to those who would not refuse to see what was visibly 
shown them. 

Secondly, Another reason that makes me doubt whether syllogism be the 
only proper instrument of reason in the discovery of truth is, that of what- 
ever use mode and figure is pretended to be in the laying open of fallacy 
(which has been above considered) those scholastic forms of discourse are 
not less liable to fallacies than the plainer ways of argumentation ; and for 
this I appeal to common observation, which has always found these artificial 
methods of reasoning more adapted to catch and entangle the mind, than to 
instruct and inform the understanding. And hence it is that men, even when 
they are baffled and silenced in this scholastic way, are seldom or never con- 
vinced, and so brought over to the conquering side ; they perhaps acknow 
ledge their adversary to be the more skilful disputant, but rest nevertheless 
persuaded of the truth on their side ; and go away, worsted as they are, with 
the same opinion they brought with them, which they could not do if this 
way of argumentation carried light and conviction with it, and made men 
see where the truth lay. And therefore syllogism has been thought more 
proper for the attaining victory in dispute, than for the discovery or confirma- 
tion of truth in fair inquiries. And if it be certain that fallacies can be 
couched in syllogism, as it cannot be denied, it must be something else, and 
not syllogism, that must discover them. 

I have had experience how ready some men are, when all the use which 
they have been wont to ascribe to any thing is not allowed, to cry out, that 
I am for laying it wholly aside. But, to prevent such unjust and groundless 
imputations, I tell them, that I am not for taking away any helps to the un- 
derstanding, in the attainment of knowledge. And if men skilled in, and 
used to syllogisms, find them assisting to their reason in the discovery of 
truth, I think they ought to make use of them. All that I aim at is, that 
3F 



442 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

they should not ascribe more to those forms than belongs to them ; and think 
that men have no use, or not so full an use of their reasoning faculty without 
them. Some eyes want spectacles to see things clearly and distinctly ; but. 
let not those that use them therefore say, nobody can see clearly without 
them : those who do so will be thought in favour of art (which perhaps they 
are beholden to) a little too much to depress and discredit nature. Reason, 
by its own penetration, where it is strong and exercised, usually sees quicker 
and clearer without syllogism. If use of those spectacles has so dimmed 
its sight that it cannot without them see consequences or inconsequences in 
argumentation, I am not so unreasonable as to be against using them. Every 
one knows what best fits his own sight. But let him not thence conclude all 
in the dark, who use not just the same helps that he finds a need of. 

Sect. 5. Helps little in demonstration, less in probability. — But however 
it be in knowledge, I think I may truly say, it is of far less, or no use at all 
in probabilities. For, the assent there being to be determined by the prepon- 
derancy, after due weighing of all the proofs, with all circumstances on both 
sides, nothing is so unfit to assist the mind in that as syllogism ; which run- 
ning away with one assumed probability, or one topical argument, pursues 
that till it has led the mind quite out of sight of the thing under considera- 
tion ; and forcing it upon some remote difficulty, holds it fast there, entangled 
perhaps, and as it were manacled in the chain of syllogisms, without allow- 
ing it the liberty, much less affording it the helps, requisite to show on which 
side, all things considered, is the greater probability. 

Sect. 6. Serves not to increase our knowledge, but fence with it. — But 
let it help us (as perhaps may be said) in convincing men of their errors and 
mistakes : (and yet I would fain see the man that was forced out of his 
opinion by dint of syllogism) yet still it fails our reason in that part, which, 
if not its highest perfection, is yet certainly its hardest task, and that which 
we most need its help in ; and that is the finding out of proofs, and making- 
new discoveries. The rules of syllogism serve not to furnish the mind with 
those intermediate ideas that may show the connexion of remote ones. This 
way of reasoning discovers no new proofs, but is the art of marshalling and 
ranging the old ones we have already. The forty-seventh proposition of the 
first book of Euclid is very true ; but the discovery of it, I think, not owing 
to any rules of common logic. A man knows first, and then he is able to 
prove syllogistically. So that syllogism comes after knowledge, and then a 
man has little or no need of it. But it is chiefly by the finding out those ideas 
that show the connexion of distant ones, that our stock of knowledge is in- 
creased, and that useful arts and sciences are advanced. Syllogism at best 
is but the art of fencing with the little knowledge we have, without making 
any addition to it. And if a man should employ his reason all this way, he 
will not do much otherwise than he, who having got some iron out of the 
bowels of the earth, should have it beaten up all into swords, and put into 
his servants' hands to fence with, and bang one another. Had the king of 
Spain employed the hands of his people, and his Spanish iron so, he had 
brought to light but little of that treasure that lay so long hid in the entrails 
of America. And I am apt to think, that he who shall employ all the force 
of his reason only in brandishing of syllogisms, will discover very little of 
that mass of knowledge which lies yet concealed in the secret recesses of 
nature ; and which, I am apt to think, native rustic reason (as it formerly has 
done) is likelier to open a way to, and add to the common stock of mankind, 
rather than any scholastic proceeding by the strict rules of mode and figure. 

Sect. 7. Other helps should be sought. — I doubt not, nevertheless, but 
there are ways to be found out to assist our reason in this most useful part ; 
and this the judicious Hooker encourages me to say, who in his Eccl. Pol. 
1. i. \ 6, speaks thus : " If there might be added the right helps of true art 
and learning (which helps, I must plainly confess, this age of the world, car- 
rying the name of a learned age, doth neither much know, nor generally 
regard) there would undoubtedly be almost as much difference in maturity 



Ch. 17. REASON. 443 

of judgment between men therewith inured, and that which men now are, as 
between men that are now and innocents." I do not pretend to have found, 
or discovered here any of those right helps of art this great man of deep 
tnought mentions ; but this is plain, that syllogism, and the logic now in use, 
which were as well known in his days, can be none of those he means. It 
is sufficient for me, if by a discourse, perhaps something out of the way, I 
am sure as to me wholly new and unborrowed, I shall have given occasion 
to others to cast about for new discoveries, and to seek in their own thoughts 
for those right helps of art, which will scarce be found, I fear, by those who 
servilely confine themselves to the rules and dictates of others. For beaten 
tracks lead this sort of cattle (as an observing Roman calls them) whose 
thoughts reach only to imitation, non quo eundum est, sed quo itur. But I 
can be bold to say, that this age is adorned with some men of that strength 
of judgment, and largeness of comprehension, that if they would employ 
their thoughts on this -subject, could open new and undiscovered ways to the 
advancement of knowledge. 

Sect. 8. We reason about particulars. — Having here had an occasion to 
speak of syllogism in general, and the use of it in reasoning, and the improve- 
ment of our knowledge, it is fit, before I leave this subject, to take notice of 
one manifest mistake in the rules of syllogism, viz. that no syllogistical rea- 
soning can be right and conclusive, but what has at least one general propo- 
sition in it. As if we could not reason, and have knowledge about particu- 
lars : whereas, in truth, the matter rightly considered, the immediate object 
of all our reasoning and knowledge is nothing but particulars. Every 
man's reasoning and knowledge is only about the ideas existing in his own 
mind, which are truly, every one of them, particular existences ; and our 
knowledge and reason about other things is only as they correspond with 
those of our particular ideas. So that the perception of the agreement or 
disagreement of our particular ideas is the whole and utmost of all our know- 
ledge. Universality is but accidental to it, and consists only in this, that the 
particular ideas about which it is are such, as more than one particular thing 
can correspond with, and be represented by. But the perception of the 
agreement or disagreement of any two ideas, consequently our own know- 
ledge is equally clear and certain, whether either, or both, or neither of those 
ideas be capable of representing more real beings than one, or no. One thing 
more I crave leave to offer about syllogism, before I leave it, viz. may one 
not upon just ground inquire, whether the form syllogism now has is that 
which in reason it ought to have 1 For the medius terminus being to join the 
extremes, i. e. the intermediate idea by its intervention, to show the agree 
ment or disagreement of the two in question : would not the position of the 
medius terminus be more natural, and show the agreement and disagreement 
of the extremes clearer and better, if it were placed in the middle between 
them? which might be easily done by transposing the propositions, and 
making the medius terminus the predicate of the first, and the subject of the 
second. As thus, 

" Omnis homo est animal, 
Omne animal est vivens, 
Ergo omnis homo est vivens. 

" Omne corpus est extensum et solidum, 
Nullum extensum et solidum est pura extensio, 
Ergo corpus non est pura extensio." 

I need not trouble my reader with instances in syllogisms, whose conclusions' 
are particular. The same reason holds for the same form in them, as well 
as in the general. 

Sect. 9. 1. Reason fails us for want of ideas. — Reason, though it pene- 
trates into the depths of the sea and earth, elevates our thoughts as nigh as 



444 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4 

the stars, and leads us through the vast spaces and large rooms of this mighty 
fabric, yet it comes far short of the real extent of even corporeal being, arid 
there are many instances wherein it fails us : as, 

First, It perfectly fails us where our ideas fail. It neither does nor can ex- 
tend itself farther than they do. And therefore wherever we have no ideas, 
our reasoning stops, and we are at an end of our reckoning ; and if at any 
time we reason about words, which do not stand for any ideas, it is only 
about those sounds, and nothing else. 

Sect. 10. 2. Because of obscure and imperfect ideas. — Secondly, Our 
reason is often puzzled and at a loss, because of the obscurity, confusion, or 
imperfection of the ideas it is employed about ; and there we are involved in 
difficulties and contradictions. Thus, not having any perfect idea of the 
least extension of matter nor of infinity, we are at a loss about the divisibility 
of matter ; but having perfect, clear, and distinct ideas of number, our reason 
meets with none of those inextricable difficulties in numbers, nor finds itself 
involved in any contradictions about them. Thus, we, having but imperfect 
ideas of the operations of our minds, and of the beginning of motion or 
thought how the mind produces either of them in us, and much more imperfect 
yet of the operation of God ; run into great difficulties about free created 
agents, which reason cannot well extricate itself out of. 

Sect. 11. 3. For want of intermediate ideas. — Thirdly, Our reason is 
often at a stand, because it perceives not those ideas which could serve to 
show the certain or probable agreement or disagreement of any other two 
ideas ; and in this some men's faculties far outgo others. Till algebra, that 
great instrument and instance of human sagacity was discovered, men with 
amazement looked on several of the demonstrations of ancient mathemati- 
cians, and could scarce forbear to think the finding several g" those proofs to 
be something more than human. 

Sect. 12. 4. Because of wrong principles. — Fourthly, The mind, by 
proceeding upon false principles, is often engaged in absurdities and difficul- 
ties, brought into straits and contradictions, without knowing how to free 
itself; and in that case it is in vain to implore the help of reason, unless it 
be to discover the falsehood and reject the influence of those wrong prin- 
ciples. Reason is so far from clearing the difficulties which the building 
upon false foundations brings a man into, that if he will pursue it, it entangles 
him the more, and engages him deeper in perplexities. 

Sect. 3. 5. Because of doubtful terms. — Fifthly, As obscure and imper- 
fect ideas often involve our reason, so, upon the same ground, do dubious 
words, and uncertain signs, often in discourses and arguings, when not 
warily attended to, puzzle men's reason, and bring them to a nonplus. But 
these two latter are our fault, and not the fault of reason. But yet the con- 
sequences of them are nevertheless obvious ; and the perplexities or errors 
they fill men's minds with are every where observable. 

Sect. 14. Our highest degree of knowledge is intuitive, without reason- 
ing, — Some of the ideas that are in the mind are so there, that they can be 
bytfiemselves immediately compared one with another : and in these the mind 
is able to perceive that they agree or disagree as clearly as that it has them. 
Thus the mind perceives that an arch of a circle is less than the whole circle, 
as clearly as it does the idea of a circle ; and this, therefore, as has been 
said, I call intuitive knowledge, which is certain, beyond all doubt, and needs 
no probation, nor can have any ; this being the highest of all human cer- 
tainty. In this consists the evidence of all those maxims, which nobody has 
any doubt about, but every man (does not, as is said, only assent to, but) 
(mows to be true as soon as ever they are proposed to his understanding. In 
the discovery of, and assent to these truths, there is no use of the discursive 
faculty, no need of reasoning, but they are known by a superior and higher 
deoree of evidence. And such, if I may guess at things unknown, I am apt 
to think that angels have now, and the spirits of just men made perfect shall 



Oh. 17. REASON. 445 

have, in a future state, of thousands of things, which now either wholly 
escape our apprehensions, or which, our short sighted reason having got 
some faint glimpse of, we in the dark grope after. 

Sect. 15. The next is demonstration by reasoning. — But though we have, 
here and there, a little of this clear light, some sparks of bright knowledge ; 
yet the greatest part of our ideas are such, that we cannot discern their 
agreement or disagreement by an immediate comparing them. And in all 
these we have need of reasoning, and must, by discourse and inference, 
make our discoveries. Now of these there are two sorts, which I shall take 
the liberty to mention here again. 

First, Those whose agreement or disagreement, though it cannot be seen 
jy an immediate putting them together, yet may be examined by the inter- 
vention of other ideas which can be compared with them. In this case, when 
the agreement or disagreement of the intermediate idea, on both sides with 
those which we would compare, is plainly discerned, there it amounts to a 
demonstration, whereby knowledge is produced ; which, though it be certain, 
yet it is not so easy nor altogether so clear as intuitive knowledge. Be- 
cause in that there is barely one simple intuition, wherein there is no room 
for any the least mistake or doubt ; the truth is seen all perfectly at once. In 
demonstration, it is true, there is intuition too, but not altogether at once; for 
there must be a remembrance of the intuition of the agreement of the me- 
dium, or intermediate idea, with that we compared it with before, when we 
compare it with the other; and where there may be many mediums, there 
the danger of the mistake is the greater. For each agreement or disagree- 
ment of the ideas must be observed and seen in each step of the whole train, 
and retained in the memory just as it is ; and the mind must be sure that no 
part of what is necessary to make up the demonstration is omitted or over- 
looked. This makes some demonstrations long and perplexed, and too hard 
for those who have not strength of parts distinctly to perceive, and exactly 
carry, so many particulars orderly in their heads. " And even those who are 
able to master such intricate speculations are fain sometimes to go over them 
again, and there is need of more than one review before they can arrive at 
certainty. But yet where the mind clearly retains the intuition it had of the 
agreement of any idea with another, and that with a third, and that with a 
fourth, &c. there the agreement of the first and the fourth is a demonstra- 
tion, and produces certain knowledge, which may be called rational know- 
ledge, as the other is intuitive. 

Sect. 16. To supply the narrowness of this, we have nothing but judg- 
ment upon probable reasoning. — Secondly, There are other ideas, whose 
agreement or disagreement can no otherwise be judged of but by the inter- 
vention of others, which have not a certain agreement with the extremes, but 
an usual or likely one ; and in these it is that the judgment is properly exer- 
cised, which is the acquiescing of the mind, that any ideas do agree, by com- 
paring them with such probable mediums. This, though it never amounts to 
knowledge, no not to that which is the lowest degree of it ; yet sometimes 
the intermediate ideas tie the extremes so firmly together, and the probability 
is so clear and strong, that assent as necessarily follows it as knowledge 
does demonstration. The great excellency and use of the judgment is "to 
observe right, and take a true estimate of the force and weight of each pro- 
bability; and then, casting them up all right together, choose the side which 
has the overbalance. 

Sect. 17. Intuition, demonstration, judgment. — Intuitive knowledge is 
the perception of the certain agreement or disagreement of two ideas imme- 
diately compared together. 

Rational knowledge is the perception of the certain agreement or disagree- 
ment of any two ideas, by the intervention of one or more other ideas. 

Judgment is the thinking or taking two ideas to agree or disagree, by the 
intervention of one or more ideas, whose certain agreement or disagreement 
with them it does not perceive, but hath observed to be frequent and usual. 



445 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4, 

Sect. 18. Consequences of words, and consequences of ideas.— Though 
the deducing one proposition from another, or making inferences in words, 
be a great part of reason, and that which it is usually employed about ; yet 
the principal act of ratiocination is the finding the agreement or disagree- 
ment of two ideas one with another, by the intervention of a third. As 
a man, by a yard, finds two houses to be of the same length, which could not 
be brought together to measure their equality by juxta-position. Words have 
their consequences, as the signs of such ideas : and things agree or disagree, 
as really they are ; but we observe it only by our ideas. 

Sect. 19. Four sorts of arguments. — Before we quit this subject, it may 
be worth our while a little to reflect on four sorts of arguments that men, in 
their reasonings with others, do ordinarily make use of to prevail on their 
assent : or at least so to awe them, as to silence their opposition. 

1. Ad verecundiam. — First, the first is to allege the opinions of men, 
whose parts, learning, eminency, power, or some other cause has gained a 
name, and settled a reputation in the common esteem with some kind of 
authority. When men are established in any kind of dignity, it is thought a 
breach of modesty for others to derogate any way from it, and question the 
authority of men who are in possession of it. This is apt to be censured, as 
carrying with it too much of pride, when a man does not readily yield to the 
determination of approved authors, which is wont to be received with respect 
-and submission by others ; and it is looked upon as insolence for a man to set 
up and adhere to his own opinion against the current stream of antiquity ; or 
to put it in the balance against that of some learned doctor, or otherwise ap- 
proved writer. Whoever backs his tenets with such authorities, thinks he ought 
thereby to carry the cause, and is ready to style it impudence in any one who 
shall stand out against them. This, I think, may be called argumentum ad 
verecundiam. 

Sect. 20 2. Ad ignorantiam. — Secondly, Another way that men ordi- 
narily use to drive others, and force them to submit to their judgments, and 
receive the opinion in debate, is to require the adversary to admit what they 
allege as a proof, or to assign a better. And this I call argumentum ad ig- 
norantiam. 

Sect. 21. 3. Ad hominem. — Thirdly, A third way is to press a man with 
consequences drawn from his own principles or concessions. This is already 
known under the name of argumentum ad hominem. 

Sect. 22. 4. Ad judicium. — Fourthly, The fourth is the using of proofs 
drawn from any of the foundations of knowledge or probability. This I call 
argumentum ad judicium. This alone, of all the four, brings true instruc- 
tion with it, and advances us in our way to knowledge. For, 1. It argues 
not another man's opinions to be right, because I. out of respect, or any other 
consideration hut that of conviction, will contradict him. 2. It proves not 
another man to be in the right way, nor that I ought to take the same with 
him, because I know not a better. 3. Nor does it follow that another man 
is in the right way, because he has shown me that I am in the wrong. I 
may be modest, and therefore not oppose another man's persuasion: I may 
be ignorant, and not be able to produce abetter : I may be in an error, and an- 
other may show me that I am so. This may dispose me, perhaps, for the 
reception of truth, but helps me not to it; that must come from proofs and 
arguments, and light arising from the nature of things themselves, and not 
from my shamefacedness, ignorance, or error. 

Sect. 23. Above, contrary, and according to reason. — By what has been 
before said of reason, we may be able to make some guess at the distinction 
of things into those that are according to, above, and contrary to reason. 1. 
According to reason are such propositions, whose truth we can discover by 
examining and tracing those ideas we have from sensation and reflection, and 
by natural deduction find to be true or probable. 2. Above reason are such 
propositions, whose truth or probability we cannot by reason derive from 
those principles. 3. Contrary to reason are such propositions as are incon- 



Ch. 17. REASON. 447 

si stent with, or irreconcileable to, our clear and distinct ideas. Thus the 
existence of one God is according to reason; the existence of more than one 
God contrary to reason; the resurrection of the dead above reason. Farther, 
above reason may be taken in a double sense, viz. either as signifying above 
probability, or above certainty ; so in that large sense also, contrary to reason 
is, I suppose, sometimes taken. 

Sect. 24. Reason and faith not opposite. — There is another use of the 
word reason, wherein it is opposed to faith ; which, though it be in itself a 
very improper way of speaking, yet common use has so authorized it, that it 
would be folly either to oppose or hope to remedy it : only I think it may not 
be amiss to take notice, that however faith be opposed to reason, faith is 
nothing but a firm assent of the mind : which, if it be regulated, as is our 
duty, cannot be afforded to any thing but upon good reason ; and so cannot 
be opposite to it. He that believes, without having any reason for believing, 
may be in love with his own fancies ; but neither seeks truth as he ought, 
nor pays the obedience due to his Maker, who would have him use those dis- 
cerning faculties he has given him, to keep him out of mistake and error. 
He that does not this to the best of his power, however he sometimes lights 
on truth, is in the right but by chance ; and I know not whether the lucki- 
ness of the accident will excuse the irregularity of his proceeding. This at 
least is certain, that he must be accountable for whatever mistakes he runs 
into : whereas he that makes use of the light and faculties God has given 
him, and seeks sincerely to discover truth by those helps and abilities he has, 
may have this satisfaction in doing his duty as a rational creature, that, 
though he should miss truth, he will not miss the reward of it. For he 
governs his assent right, and places it as he should, who, in any case or mat- 
ter whatsoever, believes or disbelieves, according as reason directs him. He 
that doth otherwise, transgresses against his own light, and misuses those 
faculties which were given him to no other end but to search and follow 
the clearer evidence and greater probability. But since reason and faith are 
by some men opposed, we will so consider them in the following chapter. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

OF FAITH AND REASON, AND THEIR DISTINCT PROVINCES. 

Sect. 1. Necessary to know their boundaries. — It has been above shown, 
1. That we are of necessity ignorant, and want knowledge of all sorts, where 
we want ideas. 2. That we are ignorant, and want rational knowledge, 
where we want proofs. 3. That we want general knowledge and certainty, 
as far as we want clear and determined specific ideas. 4. That we want 
probability to direct our assent in matters where we have neither knowledge 
of our own, nor testimony of other men, to bottom our reason upon. 

From these things thus premised, I think we may come to lay down the 
measures and boundaries between faith and reason; the want whereof may 
possibly have been the cause, if not of great disorders, yet at least of great 
disputes, and perhaps mistakes in the world. For till it be resolved how far 
we are to be guided by reason, and how far by faith, we shall in vain dispute 
and endeavour to convince one another in matters of religion. 

Sect. 2. Faith and reason what, as contradistinguished. — I find every 
sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly : and where it 
fails them they cry out, it is matter of faith, and above reason. And I do not 
see how they can argue with any one, or ever convince a gainsayer who 
makes use of the same plea, without setting down strict boundaries between 
faith and reason ; which ought to be the first point established in all ques- 
tions, where faith has any thing to do. 

Reason therefore here, as contradistinguished to faith, I take to be the 



448 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

discovery of the certainty or probability of such proposition or truths, which 
the mind arrives at by deduction from such ideas which it has got by the use 
of its natural faculties, viz. by sensation or reflection. 

Faith, on the other side, is the assent to any proposition, not thus made 
out by the deductions of reason ; but upon the credit of the proposer, as 
coming from God, in some extraordinary way of communication. This way 
of discovering truths to men we call revelation. 

Sect. 3. No new simple idea can be conveyed by traditional revelation.— 
First then I say, that no man inspired by God can by any revelation commu- 
nicate to others any new simple ideas, which they had not before from sen- 
sation or reflection. For whatsoever impressions he himself may have from 
the immediate hand of God, this revelation, if it be of new simple ideas, 
cannot be conveyed to another either by words or any other signs. Because 
words, by their immediate operation on us, cause no other ideas but of their 
natural sounds : and it is by the custom of using them for signs, that they 
excite and revive in our minds latent ideas ; but yet only such ideas as were 
there before. For words seen or heard recall to our thoughts those ideas 
only which to us they have been wont to be signs of; but cannot introduce 
any perfectly new, and formerly unknown simple ideas. The same holds in 
all other signs, which cannot signify to us things of which we have before 
never had any idea at all. 

Thus whatever things were discovered to St Paul, when he was rapt up 
into the third heaven, whatever new ideas his mind there received, all the 
description he can make to others of that place is only this, that there are 
such things, " as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered 
into the heart of man to conceive." And supposing God should discover to 
any one supernaturally, a species of creatures inhabiting, for example, Jupiter 
or Saturn, (for that it is possible there may be such nobody can deny) which 
had six senses ; and imprint on his mind the ideas conveyed to theirs by that 
sixth sense ; he could no more by words, produce in the minds of other men 
those ideas, imprinted by that sixth sense, than one of us could convey the 
idea of any colour by the sounds of words into a man, who, having the other 
four senses perfect, had always totally wanted the fifth of seeing. For our 
simple ideas then, which are the foundation and sole matter of all our notions 
and knowledge, we must depend wholly on our reason, I mean our natural 
faculties ; and can by no means receive them, or any of them, from traditional 
revelation ; I say traditional revelation, in distinction to original revelation. 
By the one, I mean that first impression, which is made immediately by God, 
on the mind of any man, to which we cannot set any bounds ; and by the 
other, those impressions delivered over to others in words, and the ordinary 
ways of conveying our conceptions one to another. 

Sect. 4. Traditional revelation may make us know propositions know- 
able also by reason, but not with the same certainty that reason doth. — 
Secondly, I say that the same truths may be discovered, and conveyed 
down from revelation, which are discoverable to us by reason, and by those 
ideas we naturally may have. So God might, by revelation, discover the 
truth of any proposition in Euclid ; as well as men, by the natural use of 
their faculties, come to make the discovery themselves. In ail things of 
this kind, there is little need or use of revelation, God having furnished us 
with natural and surer means to arrive at the knowledge of them. For 
whatsoever truth we come to the clear discovery of, from the knowledge and 
contemplation of our own ideas, will always be more certain to us than those 
which are conveyed to us by traditional revelation. For the knowledge we 
have, that this revelation came at first from God, can never be so sure, as the 
knowledge we have from the clear and distinct perception of the agreement 
or disagreement of our own ideas ; v. g. if it were revealed some ages since, 
that the three angles of a triangle were equal to two right ones, I might assent 
to the truth of that proposition, upon the credit of the tradition, that it was 
revealed; but that it would never amount to so great a certainty as the know- 



Ch. 18. FAITH AND REASON. 449 

ledge of it, upon the comparing and measuring my own ideas of two right 
angles, and the three angles of a triangle. The like holds in matter of fact, 
knowable by our senses ; v. g. the history of the deluge is conveyed to us by 
writings which had their original from revelation : and yet nobody, I think, 
will say he has as certain and clear knowledge of the flood as Noah that saw 
it ; or that he himself would have had, had he then been alive and seen it. 
For he has no greater assurance than that of his senses that it is writ in the 
book supposed writ by Moses inspired : but he has not so great an assurance 
that Moses writ that book, as if he had seen Moses write it. So that the 
assurance of its being a revelation is less still than the assurance of his senses. 
Sect. 5. Revelation cannot be admitted against the clear evidence of 
reason. — In propositions then, whose certainty is built upon the clear per- 
ception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, attained either by 
immediate intuition, as in self-evident propositions, or by evident deductions 
of reason in demonstrations, we need not the assistance of revelation, as 
necessary to gain our assent, and introduce them into our minds. Because 
the natural ways of knowledge could settle them there, or had done it 
already ; which is the greatest assurance we can possibly have of any thing, 
unless where God immediately reveals it to us ; and there too our assurance 
can be no greater than our knowledge is, that it is a revelation from God. 
But yet nothing, I think, can, under that title, shake or overrule plain know- 
ledge ; or rationally prevail with any man to admit it for true, in a direct con- 
tradiction to the clear evidence of his own understanding. For since no 
evidence of our faculties, by which we receive such revelations, can exceed, 
if equal, the certainty of our intuitive knowledge, we can never receive for 
a truth any thing that is directly contrary to our clear and distinct know- 
ledge : v. g. the ideas of one body and one place do so clearly agree, and the 
mind has so evident a perception of their agreement, that we can never 
assent to a proposition, that affirms the same body to be in two distant places 
at once, however it should pretend to the authority of a divine revelation : 
since the evidence, first, that we deceive not ourselves, in ascribing it to 
God ; secondly, that we understand it right ; can never be so great as the 
evidence of our own intuitive knowledge, whereby we discern it impossible 
for the same body to be in two places at once. And therefore no proposition 
can be received for divine revelation, or obtain the assent due to all such, if 
it be contradictoiy to our clear intuitive knowledge. Because this would be 
to subvert the principles and foundations of all knowledge, evidence, and 
assent whatsoever ; and there would be left no difference between truth and 
falsehood, no measures of credible and incredible in the world, if doubtful 
propositions shall take place before self-evident, and what we certainly know 
give way to what we may possibly be mistaken in. In propositions, therefore, 
contrary to the clear perception of the agreement or disagreement of any of 
our ideas, it will be in vain to urge them as matters of faith. They cannot 
move our assent under that or any other title whatsoever. For faith can 
never convince us of any thing that contradicts our knowledge. Because 
though faith be founded on the testimony of God (who cannot lie) revealing 
any proposition to us ; yet we cannot have an assurance of the truth of its 
being a divine revelation greater than our own knowledge ; since the whole 
strength of the certainty depends upon our own knowledge that God revealed 
it ; which in this case, where the proposition supposed revealed contradicts 
our knowledge or reason, will always have this objection hanging to it, viz. 
that we cannot tell how to conceive that to come from God, the bountiful 
Author of our being, which, if received for true, must overturn all the prin- 
ciples and foundations of knowledge he has given us ; render all our faculties 
useless ; wholly destroy the most excellent part of his workmanship, our 
understandings ; and put a man in a condition, wherein he will have less 
light, less conduct, than the beast that perisheth. For if the mind of man 
can never have a clearer (and perhaps not so clear) evidence of any thing 
to be a divine revelation, as it has of the principles of its own reason, it can 
3G 



450 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

never have a ground to quit the clear evidence of its reason, to give a place 
to a proposition, whose revelation has not a greater evidence than those 
principles have. 

Sect. 6. Traditional revelation much less. — Thus far a man has use of 
reason, and ought to hearken to it, even in immediate and original revelation, 
where it is supposed to be made to himself: but to all those who pretend not 
to immediate revelation, but are required to pay obedience, and to receive the 
truths revealed to others, which by the tradition of writings, or word of 
mouth, are conveyed down to them ; reason has a great deal more to do, and 
is that only which can induce us to receive them. For matter of faith being 
only divine revelation, and nothing else ; faith, as we use the word (called 
commonly divine faith), has to do with no propositions but those which are 
supposed to be divinely revealed. So that I do not see how those, who make 
revelation alone the sole object of faith, can say, that it is a matter of faith, 
and not of reason, to believe that such or such a proposition to be found in 
such or such a book is of divine inspiration ; unless it be revealed, that that 
proposition, or all in that book, was communicated by divine inspiration. 
Without such a revelation, the believing or not believing that proposition or 
book to be of divine authority can never be matter of faith, but matter of 
reason ; and such as I must come to an assent to only by the use of my reason, 
which can never require or enable me to believe that which is contrary tc 
itself: it being impossible for reason ever to procure any assent to that, 
which to itself appears unreasonable. 

In all things, therefore, where we have clear evidence from our ideas, and 
those principles of knowledge I have above mentioned, reason is the proper 
judge ; and revelation, though it may in consenting with it confirm its dic- 
tates, yet cannot in such cases invalidate its decrees: nor can we be obliged, 
where we have the clear and evident sentence of reason, to quit it for the 
contrary opinion, under a pretence that it is matter of faith ; which can have 
no authority against the plain and clear dictates of reason. 

Sect. 7. Things above reason. — But thirdly, there being many things, 
wherein we have very imperfect notions, or none at all ; and other things, 
of whose past, present, or future existence, by the natural use of our facul- 
ties, we can have no knowledge at all ; these, as being beyond the discovery 
of our natural faculties, and above reason, are, when revealed, the proper 
matter of faith. Thus, that part of the angels rebelled against God, and 
thereby lost their first happy state ; and that the dead shall rise, and live 
again : these, and the like, being beyond the discovery of reason, are purely 
matters of faith, with which reason has directly nothing to do. 

Sect. 8. Or not contrary to reason, if revealed, are matter of faith. — 
But since God in giving us the light of reason has not thereby tied up his 
own hands from affording us, when he thinks fit, the light of revelation in 
any of those matters wherein our natural faculties are able to give a probable 
determination ; revelation, where God has been pleased to give it, must carry 
it against the probable conjectures of reason. Because the mind not being 
certain of the truth of that it does not evidently know, but only yielding to 
the probability that appears in it, is bound to give up its assent to such testi- 
mony ; which, it is satisfied, comes from one who cannot err, and will not 
deceive. But yet it still belongs to reason to judge of the truth of its being 
a revelation, and of the signification of the words wherein it is delivered. 
Indeed, if any thing shall be thought revelation, which is contrary to the 
plain principles of reason, and the evident knowledge the mind has of its 
own clear and distinct ideas ; there reason must be hearkened to, as to a 
matter within its province : since a man can never have so certain a know- 
ledge, that a proposition, which contradicts the clear principles and evidence 
of his own knowledge, was divinely revealed, or that he understands the 
words rightly wherein it is delivered ; as he has, that the contrary is true : 
and so is bound to consider and judge of it as a matter of reason, and not 
e wallow it, without examination, as a matter of faith 



Ch. 18. FAITH AND REASON. 451 

Sect. 9. Revelation, in matters where reason cannot judge, or but proba- 
bly, ought to be hearkened to. — First, Whatever proposition is reveaied, of 
whose truth our mind, by its natural faculties and notions, cannot judge ; 
that is purely matter of faith, and above reason. 

Secondly, All propositions, whereof the mind, by the use of its natural 
faculties, can come to determine and judge from naturally acquired ideas, are 
matter of reason ; with this difference still, that in those concerning which 
it has but an uncertain evidence, and so is persuaded of their truth only upon 
probable grounds, which still admit a possibility of the contrary to be true, 
without doing violence to the certain evidence of its own knowledge, and 
overturning the principles of its own reason ; in such probable propositions. 
I say, an evident revelation ought to determine our assent even against pro- 
bability. For where the principles of reason have not evidenced a propo- 
sition to be certainly true or false, there clear revelation, as another principle 
of truth, and ground of assent, may determine ; and so it may be matter of 
faith, and be also above reason. Because reason, in that particular matter, 
being able to reach no higher than probability, faith gave the determination, 
where reason came short ; and revelation discovered on which side the 
truth lay. 

Sect. 10. In matters where reason can afford certain knowledge, that is 
to be hearkened to. — Thus far the dominion of faith reaches, and that with- 
out any violence or hinderance to reason ; which is not injured or disturbed, 
but assisted and improved, by new discoveries of truth coming from the 
eternal fountain of all knowledge. Whatever God hath revealed, is certainly 
true ; no doubt can be made of it. This is the proper object of faith : but 
whether it be a divine revelation or no, reason must judge ; which can never 
permit the mind to reject a greater evidence, to embrace what is less evident, 
nor allow it to entertain probability in opposition to knowledge and certainty. 
There can be no evidence that any traditional revelation is of divine original, 
in the words we receive it, and in the sense we understand it, so clear and 
so certain as that of the principles of reason : and therefore nothing that is ' 
contrary to, and inconsistent with, the clear and self-evident dictates of rea- 
son, has a right to be urged or assented to as a matter of faith, wherein 
reason hath nothing to do. Whatsoever is divine revelation ought to over- 
rule all our opinions, prejudices, and interest, and hath a right to be received 
with full assent. Such a submission as this, of our reason to faith, takes 
not away the landmarks of knowledge : this shakes not the foundations of 
reason, but leaves us that use of our faculties for which they were given us. 
Sect. 11. If the boundaries be not set between faith and reason, no en- 
thusiasm or extravagancy in religion can be contradicted. — If the pro- 
vinces of faith and reason are not kept distinct by these boundaries, there 
will, in matters of religion, be no room for reason at all ; and those extrava- 
gant opinions and ceremonies that are to be found in the several religions of 
the world will not deserve to be blamed. For to this crying ap of faith, in 
opposition to reason, we may, I think, in good measure, ascribe those ab- 
surdities that fill almost all the religions which possess and divide mankind. 
For men having been principled with an opinion, that they must not consult 
reason in the things of religion, however apparently contradictory to common 
sense, and the very principles of all their knowledge, have let loose their 
fancies and natural superstition ; and have been by them led into so strange 
opinions, and extravagant practices in religion, that a considerate man cannot 
but stand amazed at their follies, and judge them so far from being acceptable 
to the great and wise Goa, that he cannot avoid thinking them ridiculous, 
and offensive to a sober good man. So that, in effect, religion, which should 
most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as 
rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irra- 
tional and more senseless than beasts themselves. " Credo, quia impossibile 
est ;" I believe, because it is impossible, might in a good man pass for a sally 
of zeal ; but would prove a very ill rule for men to choose their opinions or 



452 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

OF ENTHUSIASM. 

Sec . 1. Love of truth necessary. — He that would seriously set upon the 
search of trutn, ought, in the first place, to prepare his mind with a love of 
it. For he that loves it not will not take much pains to get it, nor be much 
concerned when he misses it. There is nobody in the commonwealth of 
learning who does not profess himself a lover of truth ; and there is not a 
rational creature that would take it amiss to be thought otherwise of. And 
yet, for all this, one may truly say, that there are very few lovers of truth 
fbr truth-sake, even among those who persuade themselves that they are so. 
How a man may know whether he be so in earnest, is worth inquiry : and I 
think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. the not entertaining any proposi- 
tion with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. 
Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not truth 
in the love of it ; loves not truth for truth-sake, but for some other by-end. 
For the evidence that any proposition is true (except such as are self- 
evident) lying only in the proofs a man has of it, whatsoever degrees of as- 
sent he affords it beyond the degrees of that evidence, it is plain that all the 
surplusage of assurance is owing to some other affection, and not to the love of 
truth : it being as impossible that the love of truth should carry my assent 
above the evidence there is to me that it is true, as that the love of truth 
should make me assent to any proposition for the sake of that evidence, 
which it has not, that it is true ; which is, in effect, to love it as a truth be- 
cause it is possible or probable that it may not be true. In any truth that 
gets not possession of our minds by the irresistible light of self-evidence, or 
by the force of demonstration, the arguments that gain it assent are the 
vouchers and gage of its probability to us ; and we can receive it for no other 
than such as they deliver it to our understandings. Whatsoever credit or 
authority we give to any proposition, more than it receives from the prin- 
ciples and proofs it supports itself upon, is owing to our inclinations that 
way, and is so far a derogation from the love of truth as such; which, 
as it can receive no evidence from our passions or interests, so it should re- 
ceive no tincture from them. 

Sect. 2. A forwardness to dictate, from whence. — The assuming an 
authority of dictating to others, and a forwardness to prescribe to their opi- 
nions, is a constant concomitant of this bias and corruption of our judg- 
ments. For how almost can it be otherwise, but that he should be ready to 
impose on another's belief, who has already imposed on his own 1 Who can 
reasonably expect arguments and conviction from him, in dealing with others, 
whose understanding is not accustomed to them in his dealing with himself] 
Who does violence to his own faculties, tyrannizes over his own mind, and 
usurps the prerogative that belongs to truth alone, which is to command 
assent by only its own authority, i. e. by and in proportion to that evidence 
which it carries with it. 

Sect, 3. Force of enthusiasm.— -Upon this occasion I shall take thp 
liberty to consider a third ground of assent, which with some men has the 
same authority, and is as confidently relied on as either faith or reason ; I 
mean enthusiasm : which, laying by reason, would let up revelation without 
it. Whereby, in effect, it takes away both reason and revelation, and sub- 
stitutes in the room of it the ungrounded fancies of a man's own brain, and 
assumes them for a foundation both of opinion and conduct. 

Sect. 4. Reason and revelation. — Reason is natural revelation, whereby 
the eternal Father of light, and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to 
mankind that portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their na- 



Ch. 19. ENTHUSIASM. 453 

tural faculties : revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of dis- 
coveries communicated by God immediately, which reason vouches the truth 
of, by the testimony and proofs it gives that they come from God. So that 
he that takes away reason, to make way for revelation, puts out the light of 
both, and does muchwhat the same as if he would persuade a man to put out 
his eyes, the better to receive the remote light of an invisible star by a 
telescope. 

Sect. 5. Rise of enthusiasm. — Immediate revelation being a much easier 
way for men to establish their opinions, and regulate their conduct, than the 
tedious and not always successful labour of strict reasoning, it is no wonder 
that some have been very apt to pretend to revelation, and to persuade them- 
selves that they are under the peculiar guidance of he.aven in their actions 
and opinions, especially in those of them which they cannot account for by 
the ordinary methods of knowledge, and principles of reason. Hence we 
see that in all ages men, in whom melancholy has mixed with devotion, oi 
whose conceit of themselves has raised them into an opinion of a greatei 
familiarity with God, and a nearer admittance to his favour than is afforded 
to others, have often flattered themselves with the persuasion of an imme- 
diate intercourse with the Deity, and frequent communications from the Di- 
vine Spirit. God, I own, cannot be denied to be able to enlighten the 
understanding by a ray darted into the mind immediately from the fountain 
of light; this they understand he has promised to do, and who then has so 
good a title to expect it as those who are his peculiar people, chosen by him, 
and depending on him ] 

Sect. 6. Enthusiasm. — Their minds being thus prepared, whatever 
groundless opinion comes to settle itself strongly upon their fancies, is an 
illumination from the spirit of God, and presently of divine authority : and 
whatsoever odd action they find in themselves a strong inclination to do, that 
impulse is concluded to be a call or direction from heaven, and must be 
obeyed ; it is a commission from above, and they cannot err in executing it. 

Sect. 7. This I take to be properly enthusiasm, which, though founded 
neither on reason nor divine revelation, but rising from the conceits 
of a warmed or overweening brain, works yet, where it once gets footing, 
more powerfully on the persuasions and actions of men, than either of 
those two, or both together : men being most forwardly obedient to the im- 
pulses they receive from themselves ; and the whole man is sure to act more 
vigorously, where the whole man is carried by a natural motion. For strong 
conceit, like a new principle, carries all easily with it, when got above com- 
mon sense, and freed from all restraint of reason, and. check of reflection, it 
is heightened into a divine authority, in concurrence with our own temper 
and inclination. 

Sect. 8. Enthusiasm mistaken for seeing and feeling. — Though the odd 
opinions and extravagant actions enthusiasm has run men into were enough 
to warn them against this wrong principle, so apt to misguide them both in 
their belief and conduct ; yet the love of something extraordinary, the ease 
and glory it is to be inspired, and be above the common and natural ways of 
knowledge, so flatters many men's laziness, ignorance, and vanity, that when 
once they are got in this way of immediate revelation, of illumination with- 
out search, and of certainty without proof, and without examination, it is a 
hard matter to get them out of it. Reason is lost upon them ; they are above 
it : they see the light infused into their understandings, and cannot be mis- 
taken ; it is clear and visible there, like the light of bright sunshine ; shows 
'tself, and needs no other proof but its own evidence : they feel the hand of 
God moving them within, and the impulses of the Spirit, and cannot be mis 
taken in what they feel. Thus they support themselves, and are sure reason 
hath nothing to do with what they see and feel in themselves : what they have 
a sensible experience of admits no doubt, needs no probation. Would he 
not be ridiculous, who should require to have it proved to him that the light 
shines, and that he sees if* It is its own proof, and can have no other. When 



154 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

the Spirit brings light into our minds, it dispels darkness. We see it, as 
we do that of the sun at noon, and need not the twilight of reason to show- 
it us. This light from heaven is strong, clear, and pure, carries its own de- 
monstration with it ; and we may as rationally take a glow-worm to assist us 
to discover the sun, as to examine the celestial ray by our dim candle, reason. 

Sect. 9. Enthusiasm how to be discovered. — This is the way of talking 
of these men : they are sure because they are sure : and their persuasions are 
right, because they are strong in them. For, when what they say is stripped 
of the metaphor of seeing and feeling, this is all it amounts to : and yet these 
similes so impose on them, that they serve them for certainty in themselves, 
and demonstration to others. 

Sect. 10. But to examine a little soberly this internal light, and this 
feeling on which they build so much. These men have, they say, clear 
light, and they see; they have awakened sense, and they feel; this can- 
not, they are sure, be disputed them. For when a man says he sees or feels, 
nobody can deny it him that he does so. But here let me ask : this seeing, 
is it the perception of the truth of the proposition, or of this, that it is a re- 
velation from God? This feeling, is it a perception of an inclination or 
fancy to do something, or of the Spirit of God moving that inclination ? 
These are two very different perceptions, and must be carefully distinguished, 
if we would not impose upon ourselves. I may perceive the truth of a pro- 
position, and yet not perceive that it is an immediate revelation from God. 
I may perceive the truth of a proposition in Euclid, without its being, or my 
perceiving it to be a revelation : nay, I may perceive I came not by this know- 
ledge in a natural way, and so may conclude it revealed, without perceiving 
that it is a revelation from God ; because there be spirits, which, without 
being divinely commissioned, may excite those ideas in me, and lay them in 
such order before my mind, that I may perceive their connexion. So that 
the knowledge of any proposition coming into my mind, I know not how, is 
not a perception that it is from God. Much less is a strong persuasion 
that it is true, a perception that it is from God, or so much as true. But 
however it be called light and seeing, I suppose it is at most but belief and 
assurance ; and the proposition taken for a revelation is not such as they 
know to be true, but take to be true. For where a proposition is known to 
be true, revelation is needless : and it is hard to conceive how there can be a 
revelation to any one of what he knows already. If, therefore, it be a pro- 
position which they are persuaded, but do not know, to be true, whatever 
they may call it, it is not seeing, but believing. For these are two ways, 
whereby truth comes into the mind, wholly distinct, so that one is not the 
other. What I see, I know to be so by the evidence of the thing itself: 
what I believe, I take to be so upon the testimony of another ; but this testi- 
mony I must know to be given, or else what ground have I of believing? I 
must see that it is God that reveals this to me, or else I see nothing. The 
question then here is, how do I know that God is the revealer of this to me ; 
that this impression is made upon my mind by his Holy Spirit, and that 
therefore I ought to obey it? If I know not this, how great soever the as- 
surance is that I am possessed with, it is groundless ; whatever light I pre- 
tend to, it is but jnthusiasm. For whether the proposition supposed to be 
revealed be in itself evidently true, or visibly probable, or by the natural ways 
of knowledge uncertain, the proposition that must be well grounded, and mani- 
fested to be true, is this, that God is the revealer of it, and that what I take to 
be a revelation is certainly put into my mind by him, and is not an illusion 
dropped in by some other spirit, or raised by my own fancy. For if I mistake 
not, these men receive it for true, because they presume God revealed it. 
Does it not then stand them upon, to examine on what grounds they pre- 
sume it to be a revelation from God? or else all their confidence is mere pre- 
sumption: and this light they are so dazzled with is nothing but an ignis 
fatuus, that leads them constantly round in this circle : it is a revelation, be- 
cause they firmly believe it, and they believe it because it is a revelation. 



Ch. 19. ENTHUSIASM. 455 

Sect. 11. Enthusiasm fails of evidence that the proposition is from 
God. — In all that is of divine revelation, there is need of no other proof but 
that it is an inspiration from God : for he can neither deceive nor be deceived. 
But ho n shall it be known that any proposition in our minds is a truth infused 
by God, a truth that is revealed to us by him, which he declares to us, and 
therefore we ought to believe] Here it is that enthusiasm fails of the evi- 
dence it pretends to. For men thus possessed boast of a light whereby they 
say they are enlightened, and brought into the knowledge of this or that 
truth. But if they know it to be a truth, they must know it to be so, either 
by its own self-evidence to natural reason, or by the rational proofs that make 
it out to be so. If they see and know it to be a truth, either of these two 
ways, they in vain suppose it to be a revelation. For they know it to be 
true the same way that any other man naturally may know that it is so with- 
out the help of revelation. For thus all the truths, of what kind soever, 
that men uninspired are enlightened with, came into their minds, and are 
established there. If they say they know it to be true, because it is a reve- 
lation from God, the reason is good : but then it will be demanded how they 
know it to be a revelation from God. If they say, by the light it brings with 
it, which shines bright in their minds, and they cannot resist: I beseech them 
to consider whether this be any more than what we have taken notice of 
already, viz. that it is a revelation, because they strongly believe it to be true. 
For all the light they speak of is but a strong, though ungrounded, persuasion 
of their own minds, that it is a truth. For rational grounds from proofs that it 
is a truth, they must acknowledge to have none ; for then it is not received 
as a revelation, but upon the ordinary grounds that other truths are received : 
and if they believe it to be true, because it is a revelation, and have no other 
reason for its being a revelation, but because they are fully persuaded, with- 
out any other reason, that it is true ; they believe it to be a revelation only 
because they strongly believe it to be a revelation ; which is a very unsafe 
ground to proceed on, either in our tenets or actions. And what readier way 
can there be to run ourselves into the most extravagant errors and miscar- 
riages, than thus to set up fancy for our supreme and sole guide, and to be- 
lieve any proposition to be true, any action to be right, only because we 
believe it to be so 1 The strength of our persuasions is no evidence at all 
of their own rectitude : crooked things may be as stiff and inflexible as 
straight: and men maybe as positive and peremptory in error as in truth. 
How come else the untractable zealots in different and opposite parties 1 For 
if the light, which every one thinks he has in his mind, which in this case is 
nothing but the strength of his own persuasion, be an evidence that it is from 
God, contrary opinions have the same title to inspirations ; and God will be 
not only the father of lights, but of opposite and contradictory lights, leading 
men contrary ways; and contradictory propositions will be divine truths, if 
an ungrounded strength of assurance be an evidence that any proposition is 
a divine revelation. 

Sect. 12. Firmness of persuasion no proof that any proposition is from 
God. — This cannot be otherwise, whilst firmness of persuasion is made the 
cause of believing, and confidence of being in the right is made an argument, 
of truth. St Paul himself believed he did well, and that he had a call to it 
when he persecuted the Christians, whom he confidently thought in the 
wrong: but yet it was he, and not they, who were mistaken. Good men are 
men still liable to mistakes ; and are sometimes warmly engaged in errors 
which they take for divine truths, shining in their minds with the clearest 
light. 

Sect. 13. Light in the mind, what. — Light, true light, in the mind is or 
can be nothing else but the evidence of the truth of any proposition ; and if 
it be not a self-evident proposition, all the light it has, or can have, is from 
the clearness and validity of those proofs upon which it is received. To talk 
cf any other light in the understanding, is to put ourselves in the dark, or in 
the power of the Prince of darkness, and by our own consent to give our. 



458 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

selves up to delusion, to believe a lie. For if strength of persuasion be th« 
light which must guide us ; I ask how shall any one distinguish between the 
delusions of Satan and the inspirations of the Holy Ghost 1 He can trans- 
form himself into an angel of light. And they who are led by this son of 
the morning are as fully satisfied of the illumination, i. e. are as strongly 
persuaded that they are enlightened by the Spirit of God, as any one who is 
so ; they acquiesce and rejoice in it, are acted by it : and nobody can be 
more sure, nor more in the right (if their own strong belief may be judge) 
than they. 

Sect. 14. Revelation must be judged of by reason. — He, therefore, that 
will not give himself up to all the extravagancies of delusion and error, must 
bring this guide of his light within to the trial. God, when he makes the 
prophet, does not unmake the man. He leaves all his faculties in the natural 
state, to enable him to judge of his inspirations, whether they be of divine 
original or no. When he illuminates the mind with supernatural light, he 
does not extinguish that which is natural. If he would have us assent to 
the truth of any proposition, he either evidences that truth by the usual 
methods of natural reason, or else makes it known to be a truth which he 
would have us assent to, by his authority ; and convinces us that it is from 
him, by some marks which reason cannot be mistaken in. Reason must be 
our last judge and guide in every thing. I do not mean that we must consult 
reason, and examine whether a proposition revealed from God can be made 
out by natural principles, and if it cannot, that then we may reject it : but 
consult it we must, and by it examine whether it be a revelation from God or 
no. And if reason finds it to be revealed from God, reason then declares for 
it as much as for any other truth, and makes it one of her dictates. Every 
conceit that thoroughly warms our fancies must pass for an inspiration, if 
there be nothing but the strength of our persuasions, whereby to judge of 
our persuasions : if reason must not examine their truth by something ex- 
trinsical to the persuasions themselves, inspirations and delusions, truth and 
falsehood, will have the same measure, and will not be possible to be dis- 
tinguished. 

Sect. 15. Belief no proof of revelation. — If this internal light, or any 
proposition which under that title we take for inspired, be conformable to the 
principles of reason, or to the word of God, which is attested revelation, 
reason warrants it, and we may safely receive it for true, and be guided by it 
in our belief and actions : if it receive no testimony nor evidence from either 
of these rules, we cannot take it for a revelation, or so much as for true, till 
we have some other mark that it is a revelation besides our believing that it 
is so. Thus we see the holy men of old, who had revelations from God, had 
something else besides that internal light of assurance in their own minds, to 
testify to them that it was from God. They were not left to their own per- 
suasions alone, that those persuasions were from God; but had outward signs 
to convince them of the author of those revelations. And when they were 
to convince others, they had a power given them to justify the truth of their 
commission from heaven, and by visible signs to assert the divine authority 
of a message they were sent with. Moses saw the bush burn without being 
consumed, and heard a voice out of it. This was something besides finding 
an impulse upon his mind to go to Pharoah, that he might bring his brethren 
out of Egypt : and yet he thought not this enough to authorize him to go 
with that message, till God, by another miracle of his rod turned into a ser- 
pent, had assured him of a power to testify his mission, by the same miracle 
repeated before them, whom he was sent to. Gideon was sent by an ange! 
,o deliver Israel from the Midianites, and yet he desired a sign to convince 
him that this commission was from God. These, and several the like in- 
stances to be found among the prophets of old, are enough to show that they 
thought not an inward seeing or persuasion of their own minds, without any 
nther proof, a sufficient evidence that it was from God ; though the Scripture 
does not every where mention their demanding or having such proofs. 



Ch. 19 ENTHUSIASM. 457 

Sect. 16. In what I have said I am far from denying that God can or doth 
sometimes enlighten men's minds in the apprehending of certain truths, or 
excite them to good actions by the immediate influence and assistance of the 
Holy Spirit, without any extraordinary signs accompanying it. But in such 
cases, too, we have reason and Scripture, unerring rules to know whether it 
be from God or no. Where the truth embraced is consonant to the revela- 
tion in the written word of God, or the action conformable to the dictates of 
rignt reasDB or holy writ, we may be assured that we run no risk in enter- 
taining it as such ; because, though perhaps it be not an immediate revelation 
from God, extraordinarily operating on our minds, yet we are sure it is war 
ranted by that revelation which he has given us of truth. But it is not the 
strength of our private persuasion within ourselves that can warrant it to be 
a light or motion from heaven ; nothing can do that but the written word of 
God without us, or that standard of reason which is common to us with all 
men. Where reason or scripture is express for any opinion or action, we 
may receive it as of divine authority ; but it is not the strength of our per- 
suasions which can by itself give it that stamp. The bent of our own minds 
may favour it as much as we please ; that may show it to be a fondling of 
our own, but will by no means prove it to be an offspring of heaven, and of 
divine original. 



CHAPTER XX. 

OF WRONG ASSENT, OR ERROR. 

Sect. 1. Causes of error. — Knowledge being to be had only of visible 
^d certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our 
judgment, giving assent to that which is not true. 

But if assent be grounded on likelihood, if the proper object and motive 
of our assent be probability, and that probability consists in what is laid down 
in the foregoing chapters, it will be demanded how men come to give their 
assents contrary to probability. For there is nothing more common than 
contrariety of opinions ; nothing more obvious than that one man wholly dis- 
believes what another only doubts of, and a third steadfastly believes and 
firmly adheres to. The reasons whereof, though they may be very various, 
yet I suppose may all be reduced to these four : 

1. Want of proofs. 

2. Want of ability to use them. 

3. Want of will to use them. 

4. Wrong measures of probability. 

Sect. 2. 1. Want of proofs. — First, By want of proofs, I do not mean 
only the want of those proofs which are nowhere extant, and so are nowhere 
to be had ; but the want even of those proofs which are in being, or might 
De procured. And thus men want proofs who have not the convenience or 
opportunity to make experiments and observations themselves tending to the 
proof of any proposition ; nor likewise the convenience to inquire into and 
collect the testimonies of others : and in this state are the greatest part of 
mankind, who given up to labour, and enslaved to the necessity of their 
mean condition, whose lives are worn out only in the provisions for living. 
The»e men's opportunities of knowledge and inquiry are commonly as narrow 
as their fortunes ; and their understandings are but little instructed, when all 
their whole time and pains are laid out to still thecroakings of their own bellies, 
or the cries of their children. It is not to be expected that a man, who 
drudges on all his life in a laborious trade, should be more knowing in the 
variety of things done in the world than a pack-horse, who is driven con 
stantly forward and backward in a narrow lane and dirty road only to market, 
3H 



458 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4 

should be skilled in the geography of the country. Nor is it at all more pos- 
sible, that he who wants leisure, books, and languages, and the opportunity of 
conversing with variety of men, should be in a condition to collect those testi- 
monies and observations which are in being, and are necessary to make out many, 
nay most of the propositions that, in the societies of men, are judged of the 
greatest moment ; or to find out grounds of assurance so great as the belief of 
the points he would build on them is thought necessary. So that a great part of 
mankind are, by the natural and unalterable state of things in this world, and 
the constitution of human affairs, unavoidably given over to invincible igno- 
rance of those proofs on which others build, and which are necessary to es- 
tablish those opinions : the greatest part of men, having much to do to get 
the means of living, are not in a condition to look after those of learned and 
laborious inquiries. 

Sect. 3. Obj. What shall become of those who want them, answered. — 
What shall we say then ? Are the greatest part of mankind by the necessity 
of their condition, subjected to unavoidable ignorance in those things which 
are of greatest importance to them 1 (for of these it is obvious to inquire.) 
Have the bulk of mankind no other guide but accident and blind chance to 
conduct them to their happiness or misery 1 Are the current opinions and 
licensed guides of every country sufficient evidence and security to every 
man to venture his great concernments on, nay, his everlasting happiness or 
misery? Or can those be the certain and infallible oracles and standards of 
truth, which teach one thing in Christendom and another in Turkey] Or 
shall a poor countryman be eternally happy for having the chance to be born 
in Italy ; or a day-labourer be unavoidably lost because he had the ill luck to 
be born in England? How ready some men may be to say some of these 
things I will not here examine : but this I am sure, that men must allow one 
or other of these to be true (let them choose which they please), or else 
grant that God has furnished men with faculties sufficient to direct them in 
the way they should take, if they will but seriously employ them that way, 
when their ordinary vocations allow them the leisure. No man is so wholly 
taken up with the attendance on the means of living, as to have no spare 
time at all to think of his soul, and inform himself in matters of religion. 
Were men as intent upon this as they are on things of lower concernment, 
there are none so enslaved to the necessities of life who might not find many 
vacancies that might be husbanded to this advantage of their knowledge. 

Sect. 4. People hindered from inquiry. — Besides those whose improve- 
ments and informations are straitened by the narrowness of their fortunes, 
there are others whose largeness of fortune would plentifully enough supply 
books and other requisites for clearing of doubts and discovering of truth : but 
they are cooped in close by the laws of their countries, and the strict guards 
of those whose interest it is to keep them ignorant, lest, knowing more, they 
should believe the less in them. These are as far, nay farther from the 
liberty and opportunities of a fair inquiry, than those poor and wretched labour- 
ers we before spoke of. And, however they may seem high and great, are 
confined to narrowness of thought, and enslaved in that which should be the 
freest part of man, their understandings. This is generally the case of all 
those who live in places where care is taken to propagate truth without know- 
ledge ; where men are forced, at a venture, to be of the religion of the coun- 
try; and must therefore swallow down opinions, as silly people do empirics' 
pills, without knowing what they are made of, or how they will work, and hav- 
ing nothing to do but believe that they will do the cure : but in this are much 
more miserable than they, in that they are not at liberty to refuse swallowing 
what perhaps they had rather let alone ; or to choose the physician to whose 
conduct they would trust themselves. 

Sect. 5. 2. Want of skill to use them. — Secondly, those who want skill 
to use those evidences they have of probabilities, who cannot carry a train of 
consequences in their heads, nor weigh exactly the preponderancy of con- 
trary proofs and testimonies, making every circumstance its due allowance, 



Ch. 20. WRONG ASSENT, OR ERROR. 459 

may be easily misled to assent to positions that are not probable. There are 
some men of one, some but of two syllogisms, and no more ; and others that 
can but advance one step farther. These cannot always discern that side on 
which the strongest proofs lie ; cannot constantly follow that which in itself 
is the more probable opinion. Now that there is such a difference between 
men, in respect of their understandings, I think nobody, who has had 
any conversation with his neighbours, will question ; though he never was at 
Westminster hall or the exchange, on the one hand ; or at alms-houses or 
bedlam on the other : which great difference in men's intellectuals, whether 
it rises from any defect in the organs of the body, particularly adapted to 
thinking ; or, in the dulness or untractableness of those faculties for want of 
use ; or, as some think, in the natural differences of men's souls themselves ; 
or some or all of these together, it matters not here to examine: only this is 
evident, that there is a difference of degrees in men's understandings, appre- 
hensions, and reasonings, to so great a latitude, that one may, without doing 
injury to mankind, affirm, that there is a greater distance between some 
men and others, in this respect, than between some men and some beasts. 
Bat how this comes about is a speculation, though of great consequence, yet 
not necessary to our present purpose. 

Sect. 6. 3. Want of will to use them. — Thirdly, there are another sort 
of people that want proofs, not because they are out of their reach, but be- 
cause they will not use them ; who, though they have riches and leisure 
enough, and want neither parts nor other helps, are yet never the better for 
them. Their hot pursuit of leisure, or constant drudgery in business, engages 
some men's thoughts elsewhere : laziness and oscitancy in general, or a par- 
ticular aversion for books, study, and meditation, keep others from any seri- 
ous thoughts at all : and some out of fear that an impartial inquiry would not 
favour those opinions which best suit their prejudices, lives, and designs, con- 
tent themselves, without examination, to take upon trust what they find con- 
venient and in fashion. Thus most men, even of those that might do otherwise, 
pass their lives without an acquaintance with, much less a rational assent to, 
probabilities they are concerned to know, though they lie so much within 
their view, that to be convinced of them they need but turn their eyes that 
way. We know some men will not read a letter which is supposed to bring 
ill news; and many men forbear to cast up their accounts, or so much as 
think upon their estates, who have reason to fear their affairs are in no very- 
good posture. How men, whose plentiful fortunes allow them leisure to im- 
prove their understandings, can satisfy themselves with a lazy ignorance, I 
cannot tell: but methinks they have a low opinion of their souls, who lay out 
all their incomes in provisions for the body, and employ none of it to procure 
the means and helps of knowledge ; who take great care to appear always in 
a neat and splendid outside, and would think themselves miserable in coarse 
clothes, or a patched coat, and yet contentedly suffer their minds to appear 
abroad in a pie-bald livery of coarse patches and borrowed shreds, such as it 
has pleased chance or their country tailor (I mean the common opinion of 
those they have conversed with) to clothe them in. I will not here mention 
how unreasonable this is for men that ever think of a future state, and their 
concernment in it, which no rational man can avoid to do sometimes ; nor 
shall I take notice what a shame and confusion it is, to the greatest con- 
temners of knowledge, to be found ignorant in things they are concerned to 
know. But this at least is worth the consideration of those who call them- 
selves gentlemen, that however they may think credit, respect, power, and 
authority, the concomitants of their birth and fortune, yet they will find all 
these still carried away from them by men of lower condition, who surpass 
them in knowledge. They who are blind will always be led by those that 
see, or else fall into the ditch: and he is certainly the most subjected, the 
most enslaved, who is so in his understanding. In the foregoing instances, 
some of the causes have been shown of wrong assent, and how it comes to 
pass, that orobable doctrines are not alwavs received with an assent propo 



460 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

tionable to the reasons which are to be had for their probability: but hitherto 
we have considered only such probabilities whose proofs do exist, but do not 
appear to him who embraces the error. 

Sect. 7. 4. Wrong measures of probability ; whereof ', — Fourthly, There 
remains yet the last sort, who, even where the real probabilities appear, and 
are plainly laid before them, do not admit of the conviction, nor yield unto 
manifest reasons, but do either \>&ix uv > suspend their assent, or give it to 
the less probable opinion : and to this danger are those exposed who have 
taken up wrong measures of probability ; which are, 

1. Propositions that are not in themselves certain and evident, but doubtful 
and false, taken up for principles. 

2. Received hypotheses. 

3. Predominant passions or inclinations. 

4. Authority. 

Sect. 8. 1. Doubtful propositions taken for principles.- — First, The first 
and firmest ground of probability is the conformity any thing has to our 
knowledge, especially that part of our knowledge which we have embraced, 
and continue to look on as principles. These have so great an influence 
upon our opinions, that it is usually by them we judge of truth, and measure 
probability to that degree, that what is inconsistent with our principles is so 
far from passing for probable with us, that it will not be allowed possible. 
The reverence borne to these principles is so great, and their authority so 
paramount to all other, that the testimony not only of other men, but the evi- 
dence of our own senses are often rejected, when they offer to vouch any 
thing contrary to these established rules. How much the doctrine of innate 
principles, and that principles are not to be proved or questioned, has con- 
tributed to this, I will not here examine. This I readily grant, that one truth 
cannot contradict another : but withal I take leave also to say, that every one 
ought very carefully to beware what he admits for a principle, to examine it 
strictly, and see whether he certainly knows it to be true of itself by its own 
evidence, or whether he does only with assurance believe it to be so upon the 
authority of others. For he hath a strong bias put into his understanding, 
which will unavoidably misguide his assent who hath imbibed wrong prin- 
ciples, and has blindly given himself up to the authority of any opinion in 
itself not evidently true. 

Sect. 9. There is nothing more ordinary than children's receiving into 
their minds propositions (especially about matters of religion) from their 
parents, nurses, or those about them : which being insinuated into their un- 
wary, as well as unbiassed understandings, and fastened by degrees, are at 
last (equally whether true or false) riveted there by long custom and educa- 
tion, beyond all possibility of being pulled out again. For men, when they 
are grown up, reflecting upon their opinions, and finding those of this sort to 
be as ancient in their minds as their very memories, not having observed 
their early insinuation, nor by what means they got them, they are apt to re- 
verence them as sacred things, and not to suffer them to be profaned, touched, 
or questioned ; they look on them as the Urim and Thummim set up in their 
minds immediately by God himself, to be the great and unerring deciders of 
truth and falsehood, and the judges to which they are to appeal in all man- 
ner of controversies. 

Sect. 10. This opinion of his principles (let them be what they will) being 
once established in any one's mind, it is easy to be imagined what reception 
any proposition shall find, how clearly soever proved, that shall invalidate 
their authority, or at all thwart with these internal oracles ; whereas the 
grossest absurdities and improbabilities, being but agreeable to such prin- 
ciples, go down glibly, and are easily digested. The great obstinacy that is 
to be found in men firmly believing quite contrary opinions, though many times 
equally absurd, in the various religions of mankind, are as evident a proof, 
as they are an unavoidable consequence, of this way of reasoning from re- 
ceived traditional principles. So that men will disbelieve their own eyes. 



Ch. 2a WRONG ASSENT, OR ERROR. 461 

renounce the evidence of their senses, and give their own experience the Me, 
rather than admit of any thing- disagreeing with these sacred tenets. Take 
an intelligent Romanist, that from the first dawning of any notions in his 
understanding, hath had this principle constantly inculcated, viz. that he 
must believe as the church (i. e. those of his communion) believes, or that, 
the pope is infallible ; and this he never so much as heard questioned, till at 
forty or fifty years old he met with one of other principles : how is he pre- 
pared easily to swallow, not only against all probability, but even the clear 
evidence of his senses, the doctrine of trans instantiation ! This principle 
has such an influence on his mind, that he will believe that to be flesh which 
he sees to be bread. And what way will you take to convince a man of any 
improbable opinion he holds, who, with some philosophers, hath laid down 
this as a foundation of reasoning, that he must believe his reason (for so men 
improperly call arguments drawn from their principles) against his senses ? 
Let an enthusiast be principled, that he or his teacher is inspired, and acted 
by an immediate communication of the divine Spirit, and you in vain bring 
the evidence of clear reasons against his doctrine. Whoever, therefore, have 
imbibed wrong principles, are not, in things inconsistent with these prin- 
ciples, to be moved by the most apparent and convincing probabilities, till 
they are so candid and ingenuous to themselves as to be persuaded to ex- 
amine even those very principles, which many never suffer themselves to do. 

Sect. 11. 2. Received hypotheses. — Secondly, next to these are men 
whose understandings are cast into a mould, and fashioned just to the size of 
a received hypothesis. The difference between these and the former is, that 
they will admit of matter of fact, and agree with dissenters in that ; but differ 
only in assigning of reasons, and explaining the manner of operation. These 
are not at that open defiance with their senses with the former: they can 
endure to hearken to their information a little more patiently ; but will by no 
means admit of their reports in the explanation of things ; nor be prevailed 
on by probabilities, which would convince them that things are not brought 
about just after the same manner that they have decreed within themselves 
that they are. Would it not be an insufferable thing for a learned professor, 
and that which his scarlet would blush at, to have his authority of forty years 
standing, wrought out of hard rock Greek and Latin, with no small expense 
of time and candle, and confirmed by general tradition and a reverend beard, 
in an instant overturned by an upstart novelist 1 Can any one expect that he 
should be made to confess, that what he taught his scholars thirty years ago 
was all error and mistake ; and that he sold them hard words and ignorance 
at a very dear rate ] What probabilities, I say. are sufficient to prevail in 
such a case? And who ever, by the most cogent arguments, will be prevailed 
with to disrobe himself at once of all his old opinions, and pretences to know- 
ledge and learning, which with hard study he hath all his time been labouring 
for; and turn himself out stark naked, in quest afresh of new notions'? Ail 
the arguments that can be used will be as little able to prevail, as the wind did 
with the traveller to part with his cloak, which he held only the faster. To 
this of wrong hypothesis may be reduced the errors that may be occasionel 
by a true hypothesis, or right principles, but not rightly understood. There 
is nothing more familiar than this. The instances of men contending for 
different opinions, which they all derive from the infallible truth of the scrip- 
ture, are an undeniable proof of it. All that call themselves Christians allow 
the text, that says, juzT&voslre, to carry in it the obligation to a very weighty 
duty. But yet how very erroneous will one of their practices be, who, un- 
derstanding nothing but the French, take this rule with one translation to be 
repentez vous, repent ; or with the other, faites penitence, do penance ! 

Sect. 12. 3. Predominant passions. — Thirdly, Probabilities, which cross 
men's appetites and prevailing passions, run the same fate. Let ever so much 
probablity hang on one side of a covetous man's reasoning, and money on the 
other ; it is easy to foresee which will outweigh. Earthly minds, like mud- 
walls, resist the strongest batteries : and though perhaps sometimes the forcrj 



4G2 OF THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand 
firm, and keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturb them. 
Tell a man, passionately in love, that he is jilted ; bring a score of witnesses 
of the falsehood of his mistress, it is ten to one but three kind words of hers 
shall invalidate all their testimonies. Quod volumus, facile credimus ; what 
suits our wishes is forwardly believed ; is, I suppose, what every one hath 
more than once experimented : and though men cannot always openly gainsay 
or resist the force of manifest probabilities that make against them, yet yield 
they not to the argument. Not but that it is the nature of the understanding 
constantly to close with the more probable side ; but yet a man hath a power 
to suspend and restrain its inquiries, and not permit a full -and satisfactory 
examination, as far as the matter in question is capable, and will bear it to 
be made. Until that be done, there will be always these two ways left of 
evading the most apparent probabilities. 

Sect. 13. The means of evading probabilities : 1. Supposed fallacy. — 
First, That the arguments being (as for the most part they are) brought in 
words, there may be a fallacy latent in them : and the consequences being, 
perhaps, many in train, they may be some of them incoherent. There are 
very few discourses so short, clear, and consistent, to which most men may 
not, with satisfaction enough to themselves, raise this doubt ; and from whose 
conviction they may not without reproach of disingenuity or unreasonableness, 
set themselves free with the old reply, non persuadebis, etiamsi persuaseris ; 
though I cannot answer, I will not yield. 

Sect. 14. 2. Supposed arguments for the contrary. — Secondly, Manifest 
probabilities may be evaded, and the assent withheld upon this suggestion, 
that I know not yet all that may be said on the contrary side. And therefore, 
though I be beaten, it is not necessary I should yield, not knowing what 
forces there are in reserve behind. This is a refuge against conviction so 
open and so wide, that it is hard to determine when a man is quite out of the 
verge of it. 

Sect. 15. What probabilities determine the assent. — But yet there is 
some end of it; and a man having carefully inquired into all the grounds of 
probability and unlikeliness, does his utmost to inform himself in all particu- 
lars fairly, and cast up the sum total on both sides, may in most cases come 
to acknowledge, upon the whole matter, on which side the probability rests ; 
wherein some proofs in matter of reason, being suppositions upon universal 
experience, are so cogent and clear, and some testimonies in matter of fact 
so universal, that he cannot refuse his assent. So that, I think, we may 
conclude, that in propositions, where, though the proofs in view are of most 
moment, yet there are sufficient grounds to suspect that there is either fallacy 
in words, or certain proofs as considerable to be produced on the contrary 
side ; their assent, suspense, or dissent, are often voluntary actions : but. 
where the proofs are such as make it highly probable, and there is not suffi- 
cient ground to suspect that there is either fallacy of words (which sober and 
serious consideration may discover) nor equally valid proofs, yet undiscovered 
latent on the other side (which also the nature of the thing may, in some 
cases, make plain to a considerate man) ; there, I think, a man who has 
weighed them, can scarce refuse his assent to the side on which the greater 
probability appears. Whether it be probable that a promiscuous jumble of 
printing letters should often fall into a method and order, which should stamp 
«n paper a coherent discourse ; or that a blind fortuitous concourse of atoms, 
not guided by an understanding agent, should frequently constitute the bodies 
of any species of animals: in these, and the like cases, I think nobody 
that considers them can be one jot at a stand which side to take, nor at all 
waver in his assent. Lastly, when there can be no supposition (the thing in 
its own nature indifferent, and wholly depending upon the testimony of wit- 
nesses) that theie is as fair testimony against as for the matter of fact attest- 
ed : which by inquiry is to be learned, v. g. whether there was one thousand 
seven hundred years ago such a man at Rome as Julius Caesar : in all such 



Ch. 20. WRONG ASSENT, OR ERROR. 463 

cases, I say, I think it is not in any rational man's power to refuse his assent ; 
but that it necessarily follows, and closes with such probabilities. In other 
less clear cases, I think it is in a man's power to suspend his assent : and per- 
haps content himself with the proofs he has, if they favour the opinion that 
suits with his inclination or interest, and so stop from farther search. But 
that a man should afford his assent to that side on which the less probability 
appears to him seems to me utterly impracticable, and as impossible as it is 
to believe the same thing probable and improbable at the same time. 

Sect. 16. Where it is in our power to suspend it. — As knowledge is no 
more arbitrary than perception ; so, I think, assent is no more in our power 
than knowledge. When the agreement of any two ideas appears to our 
minds, whether immediately, or by the assistance of reason, I can no more 
refuse to perceive, no more avoid knowing it, than I can avoid seeing those 
objects which I turn my eyes to, and look on in daylight : and what upon full 
examination I find the most probable, I cannot deny my assent to. But 
though we cannot hinder our knowledge, where the agreement is once per- 
ceived, nor our assent, where the probability manifestly appears upon due 
consideration of all the measures of it ; yet we can hinder both knowledge 
and assent, by stopping our inquiry, and not employing our faculties in the 
search of any truth. If it were not so, ignorance, error, or infidelity could 
not in any case be a fault. Thus in some cases we can prevent or suspend 
our assent : but can a man, versed in modern or ancient history, doubt 
whether there is such a place as Rome, or whether there was such a man 
as Julius Caesar ? Indeed, there are millions of truths, that a man is not, or 
may not think himself concerned to know ; as whether our king Richard the 
Third was crooked, or no ; or whether Roger Bacon was a mathematician, 
or a magician. In these and such like cases, where the assent one way or 
other is of no importance to the interest of any one ; no action, no concern- 
ment of his, following or depending thereon ; there it is not strange that the 
mind should give itself up to the common opinion, or render itself to the first 
comer. These and the like opinions are of so little weight and moment, 
that, like motes in the sun, their tendencies are very rarely taken notice of. 
They are there, as it were, by chance, and the mind lets them float at liberty. 
But where the mind judges that the proposition has concernment in it ; where 
the assent or not assenting is thought to draw consequences of moment after 
it, and good and evil to depend on choosing or refusing the right side ; and 
the mind sets itself seriously to inquire and examine the probability ; there, 
I think, it is not in our choice to take which side we please, if manifest odds 
appear on either. The greater probability, I think, in that case will determine 
the assent : and a man can no more avoid assenting, or taking it to be true, 
where he perceives the greater probability, than he can avoid knowing it tc 
be true, where he perceives the agreement or disagreement of any two ideas. 

If this be so, the foundation of error will lie in wrong measures of proba- 
bility; as the foundation of vice in wrong measures of good. 

Sect. 17. 4. Authority. — Fourthly, The fourth and last wrong measure 
of probability I shall take notice of, and which keeps in ignorance or error 
more people than all the other together, is that which I mentioned in the 
foregoing chapter; I mean, the giving up our assent to the common received 
opinions, either of our friends or party, neighbourhood or country. How 
mnny men have no other ground for their tenets than the supposed honesty, 
or learning, or number, of those of the same profession ! As if honest or 
bookish men could not err, or truth were to be established by the vote of the 
multitude : yet this, with most men, serves the turn. The tenet has had the 
attestation of reverend antiquity, it comes to me with the passport of former 
ages, and therefore I am secure in the reception I give it : other men have 
been and are of the same opinion (for that is all is said), and therefore it is 
reasonable for me to embrace it. A man may more justifiably throw up 
cross and pile for his opinions, than take them up by such measures. All 
men are liable to error, and most men are in many points, by passion, or 



464 OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. Book 4. 

interest under temptation to it. If we could but see the secret motives that 
influenced the men of name and learning in the world, and the leaders of 
parties, we should not always find that it was the embracing 1 of truth for its 
own sake that made them espouse the doctrines they owned and maintained. 
This at least is certain, there is not an opinion so absurd, which a man may 
not receive upon this ground. There is no error to be named, which has not 
had its professors : and a man shall never want crooked paths to walk in, if 
he thinks that he is in the right way, wherever he has the footsteps of others 
to follow. 

Sect. 18. Men not in so many errors as imagined. — But notwithstanding 
the great noise made in the world about errors and opinions, I must do 
mankind that right as to say there are not so many men in errors and wrong 
opinions as is commonly supposed. Not that I think they embrace the truth ; 
but, indeed, because concerning those doctrines they keep such a stir about, 
they have no thought, no opinion at all. For if any one should a little cate- 
chise the greatest part of the partizans of most of the sects in the world, he 
would not find, concerning those matters they are so zealous for, that they 
have any opinions of their own : much less would he have reason to think, 
that they took them upon the examination of arguments, and appearance of 
probability. They are resolved to stick to a party, that education or interest 
has engaged them in ; and there, like the common soldiers of an army, show 
their courage and warmth as their leaders direct, without ever examining, or 
so much as knowing the cause they contend for. If a man's life shows that 
he has no serious regard for religion, for what reason should we think that 
he beats his head about the opinions of his church, and troubles himself to 
examine the grounds of this or that doctrine 1 It is enough for him to obey 
his leaders, to have his hand and his tongue ready for the support of the 
common cause, and thereby approve himself to those who can give him 
credit, preferment, or protection in that society. Thus men become profes- 
sors of, and combatants for, those opinions they were never convinced of, 
nor proselytes to ; no, nor ever had so much as floating in their heads : and 
though one cannot say, there are fewer improbable or erroneous opinions in 
the world than there are ; yet it is certain, there are fewer that actually assent 
to them, and mistake them for truth, than is imagined. 



CHAPTER XXL 

OF THE DIVISION OF THE SCIENCES. 

Sect. 1. Three sorts. — All that can fall within the compass of human un- 
derstanding being either, first, the nature of things, as they are in themselves, 
their relations, and their manner of operation : or, secondly, that which man 
himself ought to do, as a rational and voluntary agent, for the attainment of 
any end, especially happiness : or, thirdly, the ways and means whereby the 
knowledge of both the one and the other of these is attained and communi- 
cated: 1 think science may be divided properly into these three sorts. 

Sect. 2. 1. Physica. — First, the knowledge of things, as they are in their 
own proper beings, their constitution, properties, and operations ; whereby I 
mean not only matter and body, but spirits also, which have their proper na- 
tures, constitutions, and operations, as well as bodies. This, in a little more 
enlarged sense of the word, I call (bva-ix.it, or natural philosophy. The end of 
this is bare speculative truth ; and whatsoever can afford the mind of man 
any snch, falls under this branch, whether it be God- himself, angels, spirits, 
nodies, or any of their affections, as number and figure, etc. 

Sect. 3. 2. Practica. — Secondly, npu^rtKM, the skill of right applying 
or own powers and actions for the attainment of things good and useful. 



Ch. 21. DIVISION OF THE SCIENCES. 465 

The most considerable under this head is ethics, which is the seeking out 
those rules and measures of human actions which lead to happiness, and the 
means to practise them. The end of this is not bare speculation, and the 
knowledge of truth ; but right, and a conduct suitable to it. 

Sect. 4. 3. 2n/u.ita>ru». — Thirdly, the third branch may be called ^fxumTntn, 
or the doctrine of signs, the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly 
enough termed also AoyiK», logic; the business whereof is to consider the 
nature of signs the mind makes use of for the understanding of things, or 
conveying its knowledge to others. For since the things the mind contem- 
plates are none of them, besides itself, present to the understanding, it is ne- 
cessary that something else, as a sign or representation of the thing it con- 
siders, should be present to it : and these are ideas. And because the scene 
of ideas that makes one man's thoughts, cannot be laid open to the imme- 
diate view of another, nor laid up any where but in the memory, a no very 
sure repository; therefore to communicate our thoughts to one another, as 
well is record them for our own use, signs of our ideas are also necessary 
Those which men have found most convenient, and therefore generally make 
use of, are articulate sounds. The consideration then of ideas and words, as 
the great instruments of knowledge, makes no despicable part of their con- 
templation who would take a view of human knowledge in the whole extent 
of it. And perhaps if it were distinctly weighed, and duly considered, they 
would afford us another sort of logic and critic than what we have been 
hitherto acquainted with. 

Sect. 5. This is the first division of the objects of knowledge. — This 
seems to me the first and most general, as well as natural division of the objects 
of our understanding. For a man can employ his thoughts about nothing, 
but either the contemplation of things themselves for the discovery of truth ; 
or about the things in his power, which are his own actions, for the attainment 
of his own ends; or the signs the mind makes use of both in the one and the 
other, and the right ordering of them for its clearer information: All which 
three, viz. things as they are in themselves knowable ; actions as they depend 
on us, in order to happiness ; and the right use of signs, in order to know- 
ledge, being toto cozlo different, they seemed to me to be the three great pro- 
vinces of the intellectual world, wholly separate and distinct one from 
another. 



31 



INDEX 



TO 



ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



Abbot of St Martin, p. 297, § 26. 
Abstraction, 107, § 9. 

Puts a perfect distance betwixt men 

and brutes, 108, § 10. 
What, 107, § 9. 
How, 110, § 1. 
Abstract ideas, why made, 255, 256, § 
6, 7, 8. 

terms cannot be affirmed one of 

another, 308, § 1. 
Accident, 185, § 2. 

Actions, the best evidence of men's prin- 
ciples, 53, § 7. 
But two sorts of actions, 151, § 4; 

182, § 11. 
Unpleasant may be made pleasant, and 

how, 174, § 69. 
Cannot be the same in different places, 

207, § 2. 
Considered as modes, or as moral, 240, 
§ 15. 
Adequate ideas, 249, § 1, 2. 

We have not of any species of sub- 
stances, 374, § 26. 
Affirmations are only in concrete, 308, 

§1. 
Agreement and disagreements of our 
ideas fourfold, 337-340, § 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 
Algebra, 425, § 15. 
Alteration, 204, § 2. 
Analogy, useful in natural philosophy, 

434, § 12. 
Anger, 149, § 12, 14. 
Antipathy and sympathy, whence, 262, 

§7. 
Arguments of four sorts, 

1. Ad verecundiam, 446, § 19. 

2. Ad ignorantiam, ib. § 20. 

3. Ad hominem, ib. § 21. 

4. Ad judicium, ib. § 22. This alone 
right, ib. § 22. 

Arithmetic: the use of ciphers in arith- 
metic, 371, § 19. 
Artificial things are most of them collec- 
tive ideas, 202, § 3. 
Why we are less liable to confusion, 
about artificial things, than about 
natural, 303, § 40 
466 



Have distinct species, 303, § 41. 
Assent to maxims, 43, § 10. 

Upon hearing and understanding the 

terras, 46, § 17, 18. 
Assent, a mark of self-evidence, 46, § 

18. 
Not of innate, 46, § 18: 47, § 19, 20 
70, § 19. 
Assent to probability, 429, § 3. 

Ought to be proportioned to the proofs, 
457, § 1. 
Association of ideas, 260, § 1, &c. 
This association how made, 261, § 6. 
Ill effects of it, as to antipathies, 262, 

§ 7, 8: 263, § 15. 
And this in sects of philosophy and 

religion, 264, § 18. 
Its ill influences as to intellectual ha- 
bits, 263, § 17. 
Assurance, 432, § 6. 
Atheism in the world, 64, § 8. 
Atom, what, 207, § 3. 
Authority; relying on others' opinions, 

one great cause of error, 463, § 17. 
Beings, but two sorts, 411, § 9. 

The eternal Being must be cogitative, 
ib. § 10. 
Belief, what, 429, § 3. 

To believe without reason, is against 
our duty, 446, § 24. 
Best in our opinion, not a rule of God's 

actions, 67, § 12. 
Blind man, if made to see, would not 
know which a globe, which a cube, by 
his sight, though he knew them by his 
touch, 100, § 8. 
Blood, how it appears in a microscope, 

191, § 11. 
Brutes have no universal ideas, 108, § 
10, 11. 

Abstract not, ib. § 10. 
Body. We have no more primary ideas 
of body than of spirit, 194, § 16. 
The primary ideas of body, ib. § 17 
The extension or cohesion of body, as 
hard to be understood, as the think- 
ing of spirit, 195, 196, § 23, 24, 25 
26, 27, 



ENDEX. 



467 



Moving of body by body, as hard to be 

conceived as by spirit, 196, § 28. 
Operates only by impulse, 94, § 11. 
What, 114, § 11. 

The author's notion of his body, 2 Cor. 
ver. 10, 220, and of his own body, 1 
Cor. xv. 35, &c. 222. The meaning 
of the same body, 21 8. Whether the 
word body be a simple or complex 
term, 221. This only a controversy 
about the sense of a word, 228. 
But, its several significations, 308, § 5. 
Capacity, 112, § 3. 

Capacities, to know their extent, useful, 
34, § 4. 
To cure scepticism and idleness,35, §6. 
Are suited to our present state, 35, § 5. 
Cause, 204, § 1. 
And effect, ib. 
Certainty depends on intuition, 342, § 1. 
Wherein it consists, 383, § 18. 
Of truth, 384. 

To be had in very few general proposi- 
tions concerning substances, 392, § 
13. 
Where to be had, 393, § 16. 
Verbal, 386, § 8. 
Real, ib. 

Sensible knowledge, the utmost cer- 
tainty we have of existence, 415, § 2. 
The author's notion of it not danger- 
ous, 336, &c. 
How it differs from assurance, 432, § 6. 
Changelings, whether men or no, 381, § 

13, 14. 
Clearness alone hinders confusion of 

ideas, 106, § 3. 
Clear and obscure ideas, 242, § 2. 
Colours, modes of colours, 145, § 4. 
Comments upon law, why infinite, 312, 

§9. 
Complex ideas how made, 107, § 6: 110, 
§ I. 
In these the mind is more than pas- 
sive, ib. § 2. 
Ideas reducible to modes, substances, 
and relations, ib. § 3. 
Comparing ideas, 106, § 4. 

Herein men excel brutes, ib. § 5. 
Compounding ideas, 107, § 6. 
In this is a great difference between 
men and brutes, ib. § 7. 
Compulsion, 154, § 13. 
Confidence, 433, § 7. 
Confusion of ideas, wherein it consists, 
243, § 5, 6, 7. 
Causes of confusion in ideas, 243, 244, 

§ 7, 8, 9: 245, § 12. 
Of ideas, grounded on a reference to 

names, 244, 245, § 10, 11, 12. 
Its remedy, 245, § 12. 
Confused ideas, 243, § 4. 



Conscience is our own opinion of our own 

actions, 53, § 8. 
Consciousness makes the same person, 

211, § 10: 213, §• 16. 

Probably annexed to the same indi- 
vidual, immaterial substance, 216, 
§ 25. 

Necessary to thinking, 77 , § 10, 11: 
81, § 19. 

What, ib. § 19. 
Contemplation, 102, § 1. 
Creation, 204, § 2. 

Not to be denied, because we cannot 
conceive the manner how, 414, § 19. 
Definition, why the genus is used in de- 
finitions, 271, § 10. 
Defining of terms would cut off a great 

part of disputes, 322, § 15. 
Demonstration, 343, § 3. 

Not so clear as intuitive knowledge, 
343, § 4: 344, § 6, 7. 

Intuitive knowledge necessary in each 
slep of a demonstration, 344, § 7. 

Not limited to quantity, 344, § 9. 

Why that has been supposed, ib. § 10. 

Not to be expected in all cases, 418, 
§ 10. 

What, 428, § 1: 445, § 15. 
Desire, 149, § 6. 

Is a state of uneasiness, 159, 160, § 
31, 32. 

Is moved only by happiness, 163, § 41. 

How far, 164, § 43. 

How to be raised, 165, § 46.. 

Misled by wrong judgment, 171, § 60. 
Dictionaries, how to be made, 334, 335, 

§ 25. 
Discerning, 105, § 1. 

The foundation of some general max- 
ims, ib. § 1. 
Discourse cannot be between two men, 

who have different names for the same 

idea, or different ideas for the same 

name, 89, § 5. 
Despair, 149, § 11. 
Disposition, 181, § 10. 
Disputing. The art of disputing prejudi- 
cial toknowledge, 319, 320, § 6,7, 8, 9. 

Destroys the use of language, 320, § 10. 
Disputes, whence, 127, § 28. 
Disputes, multiplicity of them owing to 

the abuse of words, 324, § 22. 

Are most about the signification of 
words, 329, § 7. 
Distance, 112, § 3. 
Distinct ideas, 243, § 4. 
Divisibility of matter incomprehensible, 

198, §31. 
Dreaming, 146, § 1. 

Seldom in some men, 79, § 14. 
Dreams for the most part irrational, 80, 
§ 16. 



468 



OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



In dreams no ideas but of sensation, or 
reflection, 80, § 17. 
Duration, 120, § 1, 2. 

Whence we get the idea of duration, 

120, 121, § 3, 4, 5. 
Not from motion, 123, § 16. 
Its measure, ib. § 17, 18. 
Any regular periodical appearance, 

124, § 19, 20. 
None of its measures known to be ex- 
act, 125, § 21. 
We only guess them equal by the train 

of our ideas, ib. § 21. 
Minutes, days, years, &c. not neces- 
sary to duration, 126, § 23. 
Change of the measures of duration, 
change not the notion of it, ib. § 23. 
The measures of duration, as the revo- 
lutions of the sun, may be applied 
to duration before the sun existed, 
126, 127, § 24, 25. 28. 
Duration without beginning, 126, § 
26. 
• How we measure duration, 127, § 27, 
28, 29. 
Recapitulation, concerning our ideas 
of duration, time, and eternity, 128. 
§ 31. 
Duration and expansion compared, 129, 

§ 1. 
They mutually embrace each other, 

133, § 12. 
Considered as a line, ib. § 11. 
Duration not conceivable by us with- 
out succession, 133, § 12. 
Education, partly the cause of unreason- 
ableness, 261, § 3. 
Effect, 204, § 1. 
Enthusiasm, 452. 

Described, 453, § 6, 7. 

Its rise, ib. § 5. 

Ground of persuasion must be exam- 

ined, and how, 454, § 10. 
Firmness of it, no sufficient proof, 455, 

§ 12, 13. 
Fails of the evidence it pretends to, 
ib. § 11. 
Envy, 149, § 13, 14. 
Error, what, 457, § 1. 
Causes of error, ib. 

1. Want of proofs, ib. § 2. 

2. Want of skill to use them, 458 



§5. 
459, 



3. Want of will to use the 
§6. 

4. Wrong measures of probability, 
460, § 7. 

Fewer men assent to errors than is 
supposed, 464, § 18. 
Essence, real and nominal, 277, § 15. 
Supposition of unintelligible, real es- 
sences of species, of no use, ib. 
§17. 



Real and nominal essences, in simple 
ideas and modes always the same, in 
substances always different, 378, § 
18. 
Essences, how ingenerable and incor- 
ruptible, ib. § 19. 
Specific essences of mixed modes are 
of men's making, and how, 284, § 3. 
Though arbitrary, yet not at random, 

285, § 7. 
Of mixed modes, why called notions, 

287, § 12. 
What, 289, § 2. 

Relate only to species, 290, § 4. 
Real essences, what, 291, § 6. 
We know them not, 292, § 9. 
Our specific essences of substances are 
nothing but collections of sensible 
ideas, 295, § 21. 
Nominal are made by the mind, 297. 

§ 26. 
But not altogether arbitrarily, 298, 

§ 28. 
Nominal essences of substances, how 

made, ib. § 28, 29. 
Are very various, 299, §30: 300, § 31. 
Of species, are the abstract ideas the 
names stand for, 273, § 12, 278, 
§ 19. 
Are of man's making, 273, § 12. 
But founded in the agreement of 

things, 276, § 13. 
Real essences determine not our spe- 
cies, 276, § 13. 
Every distinct, abstract idea, with a 
name, is a distinct essence of a dis- 
tinct species, 276, § 14. 
Real essences of substances, not to be 
known, 391, § 12. 
Essential, what, 289, § 2: 290, § 5. 
Nothing essential to individuals, 290, 

§4. 
But to species, 291, § 6. 
Essential difference, what, 290, § 5. 
Eternal verities, 419, § 14. 
Eternity, in our disputes and reasonings 
about it, why we are apt to blunder, 
246, § 15. 
Whence we get its idea, 127, § 27. 
Evil, what, 163, § 42. 
Existence, an idea of sensation and re- 
flection, 91, § 7. 
Our own existence we know intuitive- 
ly, 408, § 3. 
And cannot doubt of it, ib. 
Of created things, knowable only b\ 

our senses, 415, § 1. 
Past existence known only by menu ry 
418, § 11. 
Expansion, boundless, 129, § 2. 

Should be applied to space in general, 
119, § 27. 



INDEX. 



Experience often helps us, where we 

think not that it does, 100, § 8. 
Extasy, 146, § 1. 

Extension: we have no distinct ideas of 
very great, or very little extension, 
246, § 16. 
Of body, incomprehensible, 195, § 23, 

&c. 
Denominations, from place and exten- 
sion, are many of them relatives, 
206, § 5. 
And body not the same thing, 114, 

§11. 
Its definition insignificant, 115, § 15. 
Of body and of space how distinguish- 
ed, 89, § 5: 196, § 27. 
Faculties of the mind first exercised, 
109, § 14. 
Are but powers, 155, § 17. 
Operate not, 155, 156, § 18, 20. 
r ith and opinion, as distinguished from 
knowledge, what, 428, 429, § 2, 3. 
And knowledge, their difference, 429, 

§3. 
What, 435, § 14. 
Not opposite to reason, 447, § 24. 
As contra- distinguished to xeason, 

what, 447, § 2. 
Cannot convince us of any thing con- 
trary to our reason, 449, § 5, 6. 8. 
Matter of faith is only divine revela- 
tion, 451, § 9. 
Things above reason are only proper 
matters of faith, 550, § 7. 9. 
Falsehood, what it is, 386, § 9. 
Fancy, 104, § 8. 
Fantastical ideas, 249, § 1. 
Fear, 149, § 10. 
Figure, 112, § 5, 6. 
Figurative speech, an abuse of language, 

327, § 34. 
Finite, and infinite, modes of quantity, 
137, § 1. 
All positive ideas of quantity, finite, 
139, § 8. 
Forms, substantial forms distinguish not 

species, 292, § 10. 
Free, how far a man is so, 156, § 21. 
A man not free to will, or not to will, 
157, §22,23,24. 
Freedom belongs only to agents, 155, 

§ 19. 
Wherein it consists, 158, § 27. 
Free will, liberty belongs not to the will, 
154, § 14. 
Wherein consists that which is called 
free will, 157, § 24: 165, § 47. 
General ideas, how made, 107, § 9. 
Knowledge, what, 377, § 31. 
Propositions cannot be known to be 
true, without knowing the essence 
of the species, 387, § 4. 



Words, how made, 268, § 6, 7, 8. 
Belongs only to signs, 271, § 11. 
Gentlemen should not be ignorant, 459, 

§6. 
Genus and species, what, 271, § 10. 
Are but Latin names for sorts, 286, 

§9. 
Is but a partial conception of what is 

in the species, 300, § 32. 
And species adjusted to the end of 

speech, 301, § 33. 
And species are made in order to ge- 
neral names, 302, § 39. 
Generation, 204, § 2. 
God immovable, because infinite, 194, 
§ 21. 
Fills immensity, as well as eternity, 

129, § 3. 
His duration, not like that of the crea- 
tures, 133, 134, § 12. 
An idea of God not innate, 64, § 8. 
The existence of a God evident, and 

obvious to reason, 65, § 9. 
The notion of a God once got is the 
likeliest to spread and be continued, 
66, § 9, 10. 
Idea of God late and imperfect, 68, 

§ 13. 
Contrary, 68, 69, § 15, 16. 
Inconsistent, 68, § 15. 
The best notions of God got by thought 

and application, 69, § 15. 
Notions of God frequently not worthy 

of him, 69, § 16. 
The being of a God certain, ib. 

proved, 409. 
As evident as that the three angles of 
a triangle are equal to two right 
ones, 72, § 22. 
Yea, as that two opposite angles are 

equal, 69, § 16. 
More certain than any other existence 

without us, 410, § 6. 
The idea of God not the only proof of 

his existence, 410, § 7. 
The being of a God the foundation of 

morality and divinity, 410, § 7. 
How we make our idea of God, 198, 
199, § 33, 34. 
Gold is fixed; the various significations 
of this proposition, 306, § 50. 
Water strained through it, 88, § 4. 
Good and evil, what, 148, § 2: 163, $ 
42. 
The greater good determines not the 
will, 160, § 35: 162, § 38: 164, § 
44. 
Why, 164, § 44: 165, § 46: 170, &c. 

§ 59, 60. 64, 65. 69. 
Twofold, 171, 61. 

Works on the will onlv by desire, 165 
§ 46. 



470 



Of HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



Desi/e of good how to be raised, 165, 
§ 46, 47. 
Habit, 181, § 10. 
Habitual actions pass often without our 

notice, 100, § 10. 
Hair, how it appears in a microscope, 

191, § 11. 
Happiness, what, 163, § 42. 

What happiness men pursue, 164, § 

43. 
How we come to rest in narrow hap- 
piness, 170, 171, § 59, 60. 
Hardiness, what, 88, § 4. 
Hatred, 148, § 5: 149, § 14 
Heat and cold, how the sensation of them 
both is produced by the same water 
at the same time, 96, § 21. 
History, what history of most authority, 

434, §11. 
Hope, 149, § 9. 
Hypotheses, their use, 424, § 13. 

Are to be built on matter of fact, 77, 
§10. 
Ice and water, whether distinct species, 

294, § 13. 
Idea, what, 93, § 8. 

Ideas, their original in children, 62, § 2: 
68, § 13. 
None innate, 70, § 17. 
Because not remembered, 71, § 20. 
Are what the mind is employed about, 

in thinking, 75, § 1. 
All from sensation or reflection, ibid, 

§ 2, &c. 
How this is to be understood, 349. 
Their way of getting, observable in 

children, 76, § 6. 
"Why some have more, some fewer 

ideas, 76, § 7. 
Of reflection got late, and in some very 

negligently, 77, § 8. 
Their beginning and increase in chil- 
dren, 82, § 21,22, 23, 24. 
Their original in sensation and reflec- 
tion, 82, § 24. 
Of one sense, 83, § 1. 
Want names, 83, § 2. 
Of more than one sense, 128, § 1. 
Of reflection, 86, § 1. 
Of sensation and reflection, 90, § 1. 
As in the mind, and in things, must 

be distinguished, 93, § 7. 
Not always resemblances, 95, § 15. 
Which are first, is not material to 

know, 99, § 7. 
Of sensation often altered by the judg- 
ment, 100, § 8. 
Principally those of sight, 100, § 9. 
Of reflection, 109, § 14. 
Simple ideas men agree in, 119, § 28. 
Moving ii a regular train in our minds, 
122, § 9. 



Such as have degrees want names, 145, 
§6. 

Why some have names and others not, 
146, § 7. 

Original, 178, § 73. 

All complex ideas resolvable into 
simple, 181, § 9. 

What simple ideas have been most 
modified, 181, § 10. 

Our complex idea of God, and other 
spirits, common in every tiling but 
infinity, 199, § 36. 

Clear and obscure, 242, § 2. 

Distinct and confused, 243, § 4. 

May be clear in one part and obscure 
in another, 245, § 13. 

Real and fantastical, 247, § 1. 

Simple are all real, 248, § 2. 

And adequate, 249, § 2. 

What ideas of mixed modes are fan- 
tastical, 248, § 4. 

What ideas of substances are fantasti- 
cal, 249, § 5. 

Adequate and inadequate, 249, § 1. 

How said to be in things, 249, § 2. 

Modes are all adequate ideas, 250, 
§3. 

Unless as referred to names, 250, 251, 
§4,5. 

Of substances inadequate, 253, § 11. 

1. As referred to real essences, 351, 
352, § 6, 7. 

2. As referred to a collection of simple 
ideas, 352, § 8. 

Simple ideas are perfect tKTU7rx, 254, 
§12. 

Of substances are perfect iKtvirct, 254, 
§ 14. 

Of modes are perfect archetypes, 254, 
§ 14. 

True or false, 254, § 14, &c. 

When false, 259, 260, § 21, 22, 23, 
24, 25. 

As bare appearances in the mind, nei- 
ther true nor false, 255, § 3. 

As referred to other men's ideas, or 
to real existence, or to real essen- 
ces, may be true or false, 255, § 
4, 5. 

Reason of such reference, 256, § 6, 
7,8. _ 

Simple ideas referred to other men's 
ideas least apt to be false, 256, § 9. 

Complex ones, in this respect, more 
apt to be false, especially those of 
mixed modes, 256, § 10. 

Simple ideas referred to existence are 
all true, 257, § 14: 258, § 16. 

Though they should be different in 
different men, 258, § 15. 

Complex ideas of modes are all true 
258, § 17. 



INDEX. 



471 



Of substances when false, 259, § 21, 
&c. 

When right or wrong, 260, § 26. 

That we are incapable of, ,373, § 23. 

That we cannot attain, because of their 
remoteness, 373, § 24. 

Because of their minuteness, 374, § 
25. 

Simple have a real conformity to 
things, 378, § 4. 

And all others but of substances, 378, 
§5. 

Simple cannot be got by definitions 
of words, 281, § 11. 

But only by experience, 282, § 14. 

Of mixed modes why most compound- 
ed, 287, § 13. 

Specific, of mixed modes, how at first 
made : instance in kinneah and 
niouph, 304, § 44, 45. 

Of substances: instance in zahab, 305, 
§ 46, 47. 

Simple ideas and modes have all ab- 
stract as well as concrete names, 
309, § 2. 

Of substances, have scarce any abstract 
names, 309. 

Different in different men, 313, § 13. 

Our ideas, almost all relative, 151, 
§3. 

Particular are first in the mind, 311, 
§9. 

General are imperfect, 311, § 9. 

How positive ideas may be from pri- 
vative causes, 93, § 4. 

The use of this term not dangerous, 
36, &c. It is fitter than the word 
notion, 37. Other words as liable 
to be abused as this, 38. Yet it is 
condemned, both as new, and not 
new. 39. The same with notion, 
sense, meaning, &c. 338. 
Identical propositions teach nothing, 403, 

§2. 
Identity not an innate idea, 62, 63, § 3, 
4, 5. 

And diversity, 206, § 1. 

Of a plant, wherein it consists, 208, 
§4. 

Of animals, 208, § 5. 

Of a man, 208, §6: 209, § 8. 

Unity of substance does not always 
make the same identity, 209, § 7. 

Personal identity, 210, § 9. 

Depends on the same consciousness, 
211, § 10 

Continued existence makes identity, 
218, § 29. 

xVnd diversity, in ideas the first per- 
ception of the mind, 339, § 4. 
Idiots and madmen, 108, § 12, 13. 



Ignorance, our ignorance infinitely ex 
ceeds our knowledge, 372, § 22. 
Causes of ignorance, 373, § 23. 

1. For want of ideas, 373. 

2. For want of a discoverable connex- 
ion between the ideas we have, 375, 
§ 28. 

3. For want of tracing the ideas we 
have, 376, § 30. 

Immensity, 112, § 4. 

How this idea is got, 137, § 3. 
Immoralities, of whole nations, 54, 55, 

§ 9, 10. 
Immortality not annexed to any shape, 

382, § 15. 
Impenetrability, 87, § 1. 
Imposition of opinions unreasonable, 

431, § 4. 
Impossible est idem esse et non esse, 
not the first thing known, 49, § 25. 
Impossibility, not an innate idea, 62, 

§3. 
Impression on the mind, what, 42, § 5. 
Inadequate ideas, 249, § 1. 
Incompatibility, how far knowable, 369, 

§ 15. 
Individuationis principium, is existence, 

207, § 3. 
Infallible judge of controversies, 67, 

§ 12. 
Inference, what, 427, 428, § 2, 3, 4. 
Infinite, why the idea of infinite not 
applicable to other ideas as well as 
those of quantity, since they can 
be as often repeated, 138, § 6. 
The idea of infinity of space, or num- 
ber, and of space, or number infi- 
nite, must be distinguished, 139, § 7. 
Our idea of infinite very obscure, ib. 

§8. 
Number furnishes us with the clearest 

ideas of infinite, 140, § 9. 
The idea of infinite, a growing idea, 

ib. § 12. 
Our idea of infinite, partly positive, 
partly comparative, partly negative, 
141, § 15. 
Why some men think they have an 
idea of infinite duration, but not of 
infinite space, 143, § 20. 
Why disputes about infinite are usual- 
ly perplexed, 144, § 21. 
Our idea of infinity has its original in 

sensation and reflection, ib. § 22. 
We have no positive idea of infinite, 
141, §13, 14: 142, § 16.. 
Infinity, why more commonly allowed 
to duration than to expansion, 129, 
§4. 
How applied to God by us, 137, § 1. 
How we get this idea, ib. § 2, 3. 



4T2 



OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



The infinity of number, duration, and 
3pace, different ways considered, 
133, § 10, 11. 
Innate truths must be first known, 49, 
§26. 
Principles to no purpose, if men can 
be ignorant or doubtful of them, 56, 
§ 13. 
Principles of my lord Herbert exam- 
ined, 57, 58, § 15, &c. 
Moral rules to no purpose, if efface- 

able, or alterable, 59, § 20. 
Propositions must be distinguished 
from others by their clearness and 
usefulness, 72, § 21. 
The doctrine of innate principles of 
ill consequence, 73, § 24. 
Instant, what, 122, § 10. 

And continual change, 123, § 13, 14, 
15. 
Intuitive knowledge, 342, § 1. 

Our highest certainty, 444, 445, § 14. 
Invention, wherein it consists, 104, § 8. 
Joy, 149, § 7. 
Iron, of what advantage to mankind, 423, 

§11. 
Judgment, wrong judgments, in refer- 
ence to good and evil, 170, § 58. 
Right judgment, 318, § 4. 
One cause of wrong judgment, 431, 

§3. 
Wherein it consists, 427, &c. 
Knowledge has a great connexion with 
words, 325, § 25. 
The author's definition of it explained 
and defended, 339, note. How it 
differs from faith, 429, § 2, 3: 339, 
note. 
What, 336, § 2. 
How much our knowledge depends on 

our senses, 333, § 23. 
Actual, 341, § 8. 
Habitual., ib. 

Habitual, twofold, ib. § 9. 
Intuitive, 342, § 1. 
Intuitive, the clearest, ib. 
Intuitive, irresistible, ib. 
Demonstrative, 343, § 2. 
Of general truths, is all either intui- 
tive or demonstrative, 345, § 14. 
Of particular existences, is sensitive, 

ib. 
Clear ideas do not always produce 

clear knowledge, 346, § 15. 
What kind of knowledge we have of 

nature, 191, § 12. 
lis beginning and progress, 109, § 15, 

16, 17: 45, § 15, 16. 
Given us, in the faculties to attain it, 

67, 68, § 12. 
Men's knowledge according to the . 



employment of their faculties, 72, 

§22. 
To be got only by the application of 

our own thought to the contempla- 
tion of things, 73, § 23. 
Extent of human knowledge, 347. 
Our knowledge goes not beyond our 

ideas, ib. § 1. 
Nor beyond the perception of their 

agreement or disagreement, ib. § 2. 
Reaches not to all our ideas, ib. § 3. 
Much less to the reality of things, ib. 

§6. 
Yet very improvable, if right ways 

were taken, ib. § 6. 
Of coexistence very narrow, 367, 368, 

§ 9, 10, 11. 
And therefore of substances very nar- 
• row, 368, &c. § 14, 15, 16. 
Of other relations indeterminable, 369, 

§18. 
Of existence, 370, § 21. 
Certain and universal, where to be 

had, 376, § 29. 
Ill use of words, a great hinderance of 

knowledge, ib. § 30. 
General, where to be got, 377 , § 31. 
Lies only in our thoughts, 392, § 13. 
Reality of our knowledge, 377. 
Of mathematical truths, how real, 379, 

§6. 
Of morality, real, ib. § 7. 
Of substances, how far real, 380, § 12. 
What makes our knowledge real, 378, 

§ 3: 379, § 8. 
Considering things, and not names, the 

way to knowledge, 381, §13. 
Of substances, wherein it consists, 380, 

§11. 
What required to any tolerable know- 
ledge of substances, 392, § 14. 
Self-evident, 393, § 2. 
Of identity and diversity, as large as 

our ideas, 367, § 8: 394, § 4. 
Wherein it consists, ib. 
Of coexistence, very scanty, 395, § 5. 
Of relations of modes, not so scanty 

ib. § 6. 
Of real existence, none, ib. § 7. 
Begins in particulars, 396, § 9. 
Intuitive of our own existence, 408, 

§3. 
Demonstrative of a God, ib. § 1. 
Improvement of knowledge, 420. 
Not improved by maxims, ib. § 1 
Why so thought, ib. § 2. 
Knowledge improved, only by per- 
fecting and comparing ideas, 422. 

§ 6: 425, § 14. 
And finding their relations, 422, § 7, 
By intermediate ideas, 425, § 14. 



INDEX. 



473 



In substances, how to be improved, 

422, § 9. 
Partly necessary, partly voluntary, 

426, §1,2. 
Why some, and so little, ib. § 2. 
How increased, 432, § 6. 
Language, why it changes, 180, § 7. 
Wherein it consists, 265, § 1, 2, 3. 
Its use, 285, § 7. 
Its imperfections, 309, § 1. 
Double use, ibid. 

The use of language destroyed by the 
subtilty of disputing, 319, § 6, 7, 8. 
Ends of language, 325, § 23. 
Its imperfections, not easy to be cured, 

328, §2: ib. §4, 5, 6. 
The cure of them necessary to philo- 
sophy, ib. § 3. 
To use no word without a clear and 
distinct idea annexed to it is one 
remedy of the imperfections of lan- 
guage, 329, § 8, 9. 
Propriety in the use of words, another 
remedy, 330, § 11. 
Law of nature generally allowed, 53, § 6. 
There is, though not innate, 56, § 13. 
Its enforcement, 235, § 6. 
Learning, the ill state of learning in these 
latter ages, 309, &c. 
Of the schools lies chiefly in the abuse 

of words, 312, &c. 319. 
Such learning of ill consequence, 320, 
§ 10, &c. 
Liberty, what, 153,154, § 8, 9, 10, 11, 
12: 154, § 15. 
Belongs not to the will, ib. § 14. 
To be determined by the result of our 
own deliberation is no restraint of 
liberty, 166, 167, § 48, 49, 50. 
Pounded in a power of suspending our 
particular desires, 166, § 47. 
Light, its absurd definitions, 280, § 10. 
Light in the mind, what, 455, § 13. 
Logic has introduced obscurity into lan- 
guages, 319, § 8, 7. 
And hindered knowledge, 319, § 7. 
Love, 148, §4. 

Madness, 108, § 13. Opposition to rea- 
son deserves that name, 261, § 4. 
?*IagisteriaI, the most knowing are least 

magisterial, 432, § 4. 
Making, 204, § 2. 

Man not the product of blind chance, 
410, § 6. 
The essence of man is placed in his 

shape, 382, § 16. 
We know not his real essence, 289, 

§ 3: 295, § 22: 298, § 27. 
The boundaries of the human species 

not determined, 298, § 27. 
What makes the same individual man, 
215, $ 21: 213, § 29. 

3 K 



The same man may be different per- 
sons, 214, § 19. 
Mathematics, their methods, 422, § 7. 

Improvement, 425, § 15. 
Matter incomprehensible, both in its co- 
hesion and divisibility, 195, § 25: 
197, 198, § 30, 31. 
What, 321, § 15. 
Whether it may think, is not to be 

known, 348—358, § 6: 354, &c. 
Cannot produce motion, or any thing 

else, 411, § 10. 
And motion cannot produce thought, 

ib. 
Not eternal, 414, § 18. 
Maxims, 400, 401, § 12, 13, 14, 15. 
Not alone self-evident, 394, § 3. 
Are not the truths first known, 396, 

§9. 
Not the foundation of our knowledge, 

ib. § 10. 
Wherein their .evidence consists, ib. 
Their use, 397—400, § 11, 12. 
Why the most general self-evident 
propositions alone, pass for maxims, 
397, § 11. 
Are commonly proofs, only where 
there is no need of proofs, 401, § 15. 
Of little use, with clear terms, 402, 

§ 19. 
Of dangerous use, with doubtful terms, 

400, &c. § 12: 403, § 20. 
When first known, 43, &c. § 9. 12, 

13: 44, § 14. 16. 
How they gain assent, 47, 48, § 21, 22. 
Made for particular observations, ib. 
Not in the understanding before they 

are actually known, 48, § 22. 
Neither their terms nor ideas rnnate, 

ib. § 23. 
Least known to children and illiterate 
people, 50, § 27. 
Memory, 102, § 2. 

Attention, pleasure, and pain, settle 

ideas in the memory, ib. § 3. 
And repetition, ib. § 4: 103, § 6. 
Difference of memory, ib. § 4, 5. 
In remembrance, the mind sometimes 
active, sometimes passive, 104, § 7. 
Its necessity, 103, § 5: 104, § 8. 
Defects, 104, § 8, 9. 
In brutes, 105, § 10. 
Metaphysics and school divinity filled 
with uninstructive propositions, 406, 
§9. 
Method used in mathematics, 422, § 7. 
Mind, the quickness of its actions, 100, 

§ 10. 
Minutes, hours, days, not necessary to 

duration, 126, § 23. 
Miracles, the ground of assent to mira- 
cles, 435, § 13. 



474 



OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



Misery, what, 163, § 42. 
Modes, mixed, 179, § 1. 
Made by the mind, ib. § 2. 
Sometimes got by the explication of 

their names, ib. § 3. 
Whence a mixed mode has its unity, 

ib. § 4. 
Occasion of mixed modes, 180, § 5. 
Mixed modes, their ideas, how got, 181, 

§9. 
Modes simple and complex, 111, § 5. 
Simple modes, 112, § 1. 
Of motion, 145, §2. 
Moral good and evil, what, 235, § *>. 
Three rules whereby men judge of 

moral rectitude, ib. § 7. 
Beings, how founded on simple ideas 
of sensation and reflection, 239, 240, 
§ 14, 15. 
Rules not self-evident, 52, § 4. 
Variety of opinions, concerning moral 

rules, whence, 53, § 5, 6. 
Rules, if innate, cannot with public al- 
lowance be transgressed, 55, 56, &c. 
§ 11, 12, 13. 
Morality, capable of demonstration, 370, 
§ 18: 422, § 8. 
The proper study of mankind, 423, 

§ 11. 
Of actions, in their conformity to a 
rule, 240, § 15. 
Mistakes in moral notions, owing to 
names, ib. § 16. 
Discourses in morality, if not clear, it 
is the fault of the speaker, 332, § 17. 
Hinderances of demonstrative treating 
of morality. 1. Want of marks. 
2. Complexedness, 371, § 19. 3. 
Interest, 372, § 20. 
Change of names in morality, changes 

not the nature of things, 380, § 9. 
And mechanism, hard to be reconciled, 

57, § 14. 
Secured amidst men's wrong judg- 
ments, 175, § 70. 
Motion, slow or very swift, why not per- 
ceived, 122, § 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. 
Voluntary, inexplicable, 414, § 19. 
Its absurd definitions, 280, § 8, 9. 
Naming of ideas, 107, § 8. 
Names moral, established by law, are 
not to be varied from, 380, § 10. 
Of substances, standing for real essen- 
ces, are not capable to convey cer- 
tainty to the understanding, 388, 
§5. 
Standing for nominal essences, will 
make some, though not many, cer- 
tain propositions, ib. § 6. 
Why men substitute names for real 
essences, which they know not, 323, 
§19. 



Two false suppositions, in such .an use 
of names, 324, § 21. 

A particular name to every particular 
thing impossible, 269, § 2. 

And useless, ib. § 3. 

Proper names, where used, ib. § 4, 5. 

Specific names are affixed to the no- 
minal essence, 277, § 16. 

Of simple ideas and substances, refer 
to things, 279, § 2. 

What names stand for both real and 
nominal essence, ib. § 3. 

Of simple ideas not capable of defini- 
tions, ib. § 4. 

Why, 280, § 7. 

Of least doubtful signification, 282, 
§15. 

Have few ascents " in linea prsedica- 
mentali," 283, § 16. 

Of complex ideas, may be defined, 
282, § 12. 

Of mixed modes, stand for arbitrary 
ideas, 284, § 2, 3: 304, § 44. 

Tie together the parts of their com- 
plex ideas, 286, § 10. 

Stand always for the real essence, 288, 
§ 14. 

Why got, usually, before the ideas are 
known, ib. § 15. 

Of relations comprehended under 
those of mixed modes, ib. § 16. 

General names of substances stand for 
sorts, 289, § 1. 

Necessary to species, 302, § 39. 

Proper names belong only to substan- 
ces, 303, § 42. 

Of modes in their first application, 304, 
§ 44, 45. 

Of substances in their first application, 
305, § '46, 47. 

Specific names stand for different things 
in different men, 306, § 48. 

Are put in the place of the thing sup- 
posed to have the real essence of 
the species, ib. § 49. 

Of mixed modes, doubtful often, be- 
cause of the great composition of 
the ideas they stand for, 310, § 6. 

Because they want standards in nature, 

311, § 7. 

Of substances, doubtful, because re- 
ferred to patterns, that cannot be 
known, or known but imperfectly 

312, &c. § 11, 12, 13, 14. 

In their philosophical use hard to 

have settled significations, 314, § 15 
Instance, liquor, ib. § 16: gold, 315 

§17. 
Of simple ideas, why least doubtful, 

ib. § 18. 
Least compounded ideas have the 

least dubious names, 316, § 19. 



INDEX. 



475 



Natural philosophy, not capable of sci- 
ence, 374, § 26: 423, § 10. 
Yet very useful, 424, § 12. 
How to be improved, ib. 
What has hindered its improvement, 
ib. 
Necessity, 154, § 13. 
Negative terms, 265, § 4. 
Names signify the absence of positive 

ideas, 93, § 5. 
Newton (Mr) 398, § 11. 
Nothing: that nothing cannot produce 
any thing, is demonstration, 409, § 3. 
Notions, 179, § 2. 
Number, 134. 

Modes of number the most distinct 

ideas, ib. § 3. 
Demonstrations in numbers, the most 

determinate, ib. § 4. 
The general measure, 136, § 8. 
Affords the clearest idea of infinity, 
140, § 9. 
Numeration, what, 135, § 5. 

Names necessary to it, ib. § 5, 6. 
And order, 136, § 7. 
Why not early in children, and in 
some never, ib. 
Obscurity, unavoidable in ancient au- 
thors, 312, § 10. 
The cause of it, in our ideas, 242, § 3. 
Obstinate, they are most, who have least 

examined, 431, § 3. 
Opinion, what, 429, § 3. 

How opinions grow up to principles, 

60, 61, &c. § 22, 23, 24, 25, 26. 
Of others, a wrong ground of assent, 
430, § 6: 463, § 17. 
Organs: our organs suited to our state, 

191, 192, &c. § 12, 13. 
Pain, present, works presently, 172, § 64. 

Its use, 208, § 4. 
Parrot, mentioned by Sir W. T. 209, 
§8. 
Holds a rational discourse, ib. 
Particles join parts, or whole sentences 
together, 307, § 1. 
In them lies the beauty of well-speak- 
ing, ib. § 2. 
How their use is to be known, ib. § 3. 
They express some action, or posture 
of the mind, ib. § 4. 
Pascal, his great memory, 104, § 9. 
Passion, 182, § 11. 

Passions, how they lead us into error, 
434, § 11. 
Turn on pleasure and pain, 148, § 3 
Passions are seldom single, 160, § 39. 
Perception threefold, 152, § 5. 

In perception, the mind for the most 

part passive, 98, § 1. 
Is an impression made on the mind, 
99 § 3 4. 



In the womb, ib. § 5. 

Difference between it and innate ideas, 
ib. § 6. 
Puts the difference between the animal 
and vegetable kingdom, 101, § 11. 

The several degrees of it show the 
wisdom and goodness of the Maker, 
ib. § 12. 

Belongs to all animals, ib. § 12, 13, 
14. 

The first inlet of knowledge, 102, § 15 
Person, what, 210, § 9. 

A forensic term, 217, § 26. 

The same consciousness alone makes 
the same person, 212, § 13: 216, 
§ 23. 

The same soul Avithout the same con- 
sciousness, makes not the same per- 
son, 212, § 14, &c. 

Reward and punishment follow per- 
sonal identity, 214, § 18. 
Phantastical ideas, 247, § 1. 
Place, 113, § 7, 8. 

Use of place, 114, § 9. 

Nothing: but a relative position, ib. 
§ 10." 

Sometimes taken for the space a body 
fills, ib. § 10. 

Twofold, 130, § 6: 130, 131, § 6, 7. 
Pleasure and pain, 148, § 1: 150, § 15, 
16. 

Join themselves to most of our ideas, 
90, § 2. 
Pleasure, why joined to several actions, 

90, § 3. 
Power, how we come by its idea, 150, 

§1. 

Active and passive, 151, § 2. 

No passive power in God, no active 
power in matter; both active and 
passive in spirits, ib. 

Our idea of active power clearest from 
reflection, ib. § 4. 

Powers operate not on powers, 155, 
§ 18. 

Make a great part of the ideas of sub- 
stances, 190, § 7. 

Why, ib. § 8. 

An idea of sensation and reflection, 
93, § 8. 
Practical principles not innate, 51, § 1. 

Not universally assented to, ib. § 2. 

Are for operation, 52, § 3. 

Not agreed, 57, § 14. 

Different, 60, § 21. 
Principles, not to be received withoui 
strict examination, 421, § 4: 460, 
§8. 

The ill consequences of wrong princi- 
ples, ib. § 9, 10. 

None innate, 41. 



476 



OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



None universally assented to, ib. § 2, 

3,4. 
How ordinarily got, 60, § 22, &c. 
Are to be examined, 61, 62, § 26, 27. 
Not innate, it* the ideas they are made 

up of are not innate, 62, § 1. 
Privative terms, 265, § 4. 
Probability, what, 428, &c. § 1. 3. 
The grounds of probability, 429, § 4. 
In matter of fact, 432, § 0. 
How we are to judge, in probabilities, 

429, § 5. 
Difficulties in probabilities, 433, § 9. 
Grounds of probability in speculation, 

434, § 12. 
Wrong measures of probability, 460, 

How evaded by prejudiced minds, 
462, § 13, 14. 
Proofs, 343, § 3. 

Properties of specific essences, not 
known, 295, § 19. 

Of things very numerous, 253, § 10: 
259, § 24. 
Propositions, identical, teach nothing, 
403, § 2. 

Generical, teach nothing, 405, § 4: 
407, § 13. 

Wherein a part of the definition is 
predicated of the subject, teach 
nothing, 405, § 5, 6. 

But the signification of the word, 406, 
§7. 

Concerning substances generally, 
either trifling or uncertain, ib. § 9. 

Merely verbal, how to be known, 
407, § 12. 

Abstract terms, predicated one of an- 
other, produce merely verbal propo- 
sitions, ib. 

Or part of a complex idea, predicated 
of the whole, 405, § 4: 407, § 13. 

More propositions, merely verbal, 
than is suspected, ib. 

Universal propositions concern not ex- 
istence, 408, § 1. 

What propositions concern existence, 
ib. 

Certain propositions, concerning ex- 
istence, are particular; concerning' 
abstract ideas, may be general, 419, 
'§ 13. 

Mental, 384, § 3: 385, § 5. 

Verbal, ib. 

Mental, hard to be treated, 384, § 3, 4. 
Punishment, what, 235, § 5. 

And reward, follow consciousness, 
214, § 18: 217, § 26. 

An unconscious drunkard, why pun- 
ished, 215, § 22. 
Q lal'ties: secondary qualities, their con- 



nexion, or inconsistence, unknown, 
368, § 11. 

Of substances, scarce knowable, bu* 
by experience, 368, 369, § 14. 16. 

Of spiritual substances, less than ol 
corporeal, 370, § 17. 

Secondary, have no conceivable con- 
nexion with the primary, that pro- 
duce them, 368, § 12, 13: 375, § 
28. 

Of substances, depend on remote 
causes, 390, § 11. 

Not to be known by descriptions, 333, 
§ 21. 

Secondary, how far capable of demon- 
stration, 345, § 11, 12, 13. 

What, 94, § 10: 95, § 16. 

How said to be in things, 249, § 2. 

Secondary, would be other, if we 
could discover the minute parts of 
bodies, 191, § 11. 

Primary qualities, 94, § 9. 

How they produce ideas in us, ib. § 
11,12. 

Secondary qualities, 94, 95, § 13, 1 i, 
15. 

Primary qualities resemble our ideas, 
secondary not, 95, § 15, 16, &c. 

Three sorts of qualities in bodies, 97, 
§ 23. 

i. e. primary, secondary, immediately 
perceivable; and secondary, medi- 
ately perceivable, 98, § 26. 

Secondary qualities, are bare powers, 
97, § 23, 24, 25. 

Secondary qualities have no discerni- 
ble connexion with the first, ib. § 25. 
Quotations, how little to be relied on, 

434, § 11. 
Real ideas, 247, 248, §1,2. 
Reason, its various significations, 436, 

§1- 

What, ib. § 2. 

Reason is natural revelation, 452, § 4. 

It must judge of revelation, 456, § 14, 
15. 

It must be our last guide in every 
thing, ib. 

Four parts of reason, 437, § 3. 

Where reason fails us, 443, § 9. 

Necessary in all but intuition, 445, 
§ 15. 

As contra-distinguished to faith, what, 
447, § 2. 

Helps us not to the knowledge of in- 
nate truths, 53, § 5, 6, 7, 8. 

General ideas, general terms, and rea- 
son, usually grow together, 45, § 15 

Recollection, 146, § 1. 

Reflection, 79, § 4. 

Related, 201, § L. 



INDEX. 



477 



Relation, 201, § 1. 

Relation proportional, 233, § 1. 

Natural, ib. § 2. 

Instituted, 234, § 3. 

Moral, ib. § 4. 

Numerous, 240, § 17. 

Terminate in simple ideas, ib. § 18. 

Our clear idea of relation, 241, § 19. 

Names of relations doubtful, ib. 

Without correlative terms, not so 

commonly observed, 201, § 2. 
Different from the things related, 202, 

§4. 
Changes without any change in the 

subject, ib. § 5. 
Always between two, ib. § 6. 
All tbings capable of relation, ib. § 7. 
The idea of the relation often clearer 
than of the things related, 203, § 8. 
All terminate in simple ideas of sen- 
sation and reflection, ib. § 9. 
Relative, 201, § 1. 

Some relative terms taken for external 

denominations, ib. § 2. 
Some for absolute, ib. § 3. 
How to be known, 203, § 10. 
Many words, though seeming abso- 
lute, are relatives, 202, § 3, 4, 5. 
Religion, all men have time to inquire 
into, 458, § 3. 
But in many places are hindered from 
inquiring, ib. § 4. 
Remembrance, of great moment, in com- 
mon life, 104, § 8. 
What, 71, § 20: 104, § 7. 
Reputation, of great force, in common 

life, 238, § 12. 
Restraint, 154, § 13. 
Resurrection, the author's notion of it, 
230, &c. 
Not necessarily understood of the 
same body, ib. &c. The meaning 
of his body, 2 Cor. v. 10, 220. 
The same body of Christ arose, and 

why, 221. 
How the Scriptures constantly speaks 
£l jut it, 226. 
Revelation, an unquestionable ground of 
assent, 435, § 14. 
Belief, no proof it, 456, § 15. 
Traditional revelation cannot convey 

any new simple ideas, 448, § 3. 
Not so sure as our reason, or senses, 

ib. § 4. 
In things of reason, no need of revela- 
tion, 449, § 5. 
Cannot overrule our clear knowledge, 

ib.: 451, § 10. 
Must overrule probabilities of reason, 
450, 451, § 8, 9. 
Reward, what, 235, § 5. 
Rhetoric, an art of deceiving, 327, § 34. 



Sagacity, 343, § 3. 

Same, whether substance, modt or con- 
crete, 218, § 28. 
Sand, white to the eye, pellucid in a mi- 
croscope, 191, § 11. 
Schools, wherein faulty, 319, § 6, &c. 
Science, divided into a consideration of 
nature, of operation, and of signs, 
464. 
No science of natural bodies, 376, § 29 
Scripture: interpretations of Scripture 

not to be imposed, 317, § 23. 
Self, what makes it, 215, § 20: 216, § 
23, 24, 25. 
Self-love, 261, § 2. 

Partly cause of unreasonableness in 
us, ib. 
Self-evident propositions, where to be 
had, 393, &c. 
Neither needed nor admitted proof, 
402, § 19. 
Sensation, 75, § 3. 

Distinguishable from other percep- 
tions, 345, § 14. 
Explained, 96, § 21. 
What, 146, § 1. 
Senses, why we cannot conceive other 
qualities, than the objects of our 
senses, 85, § 3. 
Learn to discern by exercise, 333, § 

21. 
Much quicker would not be useful to 

us, 191, § 12. 
Our organs of sense suited to our state, 
191, 192, § 12, 13. 
Sensible knowledge is as certain as we 
need, 417, § 8. 
Sensible knowledge goes not beyond 
the present act, 418, § 9. 
Shame, 150, § 17. 
Simple ideas, 83, § 1. 

Not made by the mind, ib, § 2. 
Power of the mind over them, 112, § 1. 
The materials of all our knowledge, 

92, § 10. 

All positive, ib. § 1. 

Very different from their causes, 92, 

93, § 2, 3. 

Sin, with different men, stands for diffe- 
rent actions, 59, § 19. 
Sceptical, no one so sceptical as to doubt 

his own existence, 409, § 2. 
Solidity, 87, § 1. 

Inseparable from body, ib. 
By its body fills space, ib. § 2. 
This idea got by touch, ib § 1. 
How distinguished, from space ib. § 3. 
How from hardness, 88, § 4. 
Something from eternity demonstrated, 

409, '§ 3: 410, § 8. 
Sorrow, 149, § 8. 
Soul thinks not always, 77, § 9, &c. 



*/8 



OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING* 



Not in sound sleep, 78, § 11, &c. 

Its immateriality, we know not, 348 — 
367, § 6: 356, Sec. 

Religion, not concerned in the soul's 
immateriality, 348 — 367, § 6. 

Our ignorance about it, 217, § 27. 

The immortality of it, not proved by 
reason, 358, &c. 

It is brought to light by revelation, ib. 
Sound, its modes, 145, § 3. 
Space, its idea got by sight and touch, 
112, § 2. 

Its modifications, ib. § 4. 

Not body, 114, 115, § 11, 12. 

Its parts inseparable, 115, § 13. 

Immovable, ib. § 14. 

Whether body, or spirit, 117, § 16. 

Whether substance, or accident, ib. § 
17. 

Infinite, 117, §21: 137, § 4. 

Ideas of space and body distinct, 118, 
§ 24, 25. 

Considered as a solid, 133, § 11. 

Hard to conceive any real being void 
of space, ib. 

Species: why changing one simple idea 
of the complex one is thought to 
change the species in modes, but 
not in substances, 323, § 19. 

Of animals and vegetables, mostly dis- 
tinguished by figure, 298, § 29. 

Of other things, by colour, 299, § 29. 

Made by the understanding, for com- 
munication, 286, § 9. 

No species of mixed modes without a 
name, 287, § 11. 

Of substances, are determined by the 
nominal essence, 291, &c. § 7, 8. 
11. 13. 

Not by substantial forms, 292, § 10. 

Nor by the real essence, 295, § 18: 
296, § 25. 

Of spirits, how distinguished, 293, § 11. 

More species of creatures above than 
below us, ib. § 12. 

Of creatures very gradual, 294, § 12. 

What is necessary to the making of 
species, by real essences, ib. § 14, 
&c. 

Of animals and plants, cannot be dis- 
tinguished by propagation, 296, § 23. 

Of animals and vegetables, distinguish- 
ed principally by the shape and fi- 
gure; of other things by the colour, 
298, § 29. 

Of man, likewise, in part, 297, § 26. 

Instance, Abbot of St Martin, ib. 

Is but a partial conception of what is 
in the individuals, 300, § 32. 

It is the complex idea, which the name 
stands for, that makes the species, 
301, § S5. 



Man makes the species, or sorts, 802, 
§ 36, 37. 

The foundation of it is in the simili- 
tude found in things, ib. 

Every distinct, abstract idea makes a 
different species, ib. § 38. 
Speech, its end, 265, § 1, 2. 

Proper speech, 268, § 8. 

Intelligi'ble, ib. 

Spirits, the existence of spirits not 
knowable, 419, § 12. 

How it is proved, ib. 

Operation of spirits on bodies not con- 
ceivable, 375, § 28. 

What knowledge they have of bodies, 
333, § 23. 

Separate, how their knowledge may 
exceed ours, 104, § 9. 

We have as clear a notion of the sub- 
stance of spirit as of body, 189, § 5. 

A conjecture concerning one way of 
knowledge wherein spirits excel 
us, 192, § 13. 

Our ideas of spirit, 193, § 15. 

As clear as that of body, ib.: 194, 
§ 22. 

Primary ideas belonging to spirits, ib. 
§ 18. 

Move, ib. § 19,20. 

Ideas of spirit and body compared, 
ib. § 22: 197, § 30. 

The existence of spirits, as easy to be 
admitted, as that of bodies, 196, § 
28. 

We have no idea how spirits commu- 
nicate their thoughts, 199, § 36. 

How far we are ignorant of the being, 
species, and properties of spirits, 
375, § 27. 

The word, spirit, does not necessarily 
denote immateriality, 348. 

The Scripture speaks of material spi- 
rits, 349. 
Stupidity, 104, § 8. 
Substance, 183, § 1. 

No idea of it, 70, § 18. 

Not very knowable, ib. 

Our certainty, concerning substances, 
reaches but a little way, 368, § 11, 
12: 392, § 15. 

The confused idea of substance in 
general, makes always a part of the 
essence of the species of substances, 
295, § 21. 

In substances, we must rectify the sig- 
nification of their names, by the 
things, more than by definitions, 
334, § 24. 

Their ideas single or collective, 107, 

§6. 
We have no distinct idea of substance. 
116, § 18, 19. 



INDEX. 



479 



We have no idea of pure substance, 

184, 185, §2. 
Our ideas of the sorts of substances, 

186—189, § 3, 4: 189, § 6. 
Observables, in our ideas of substances, 

200, § 37. 
Collective ideas of substances, ib. &c. 
They are single ideas, 201, § 2. 
Three sorts of substances, 207, § 2. 
The ideas of substances have in the 

mind a double reference, 251, § 6. 
The properties of substances nume- 
rous, and not all to be known, 253, 
§ 9, 10. 
The perfectest ideas of substances, 

190, § 7. 
Three sorts of ideas make our com- 
plex one of substances, ib. § 9. 
Substance, not discarded by the essay, 

185, &c. note. 
The author's account of it as clear as 
that of noted logicians, 186, &c note. 
We talk like children about it, 184, 

§ 2: 187, note. 
The author makes not the being of it 
depend on the fancies of men, 183, 
&c. note. 
Idea of it obscure, 348, &c. note. 
The author's principles consist with 
the certainty of its existence, 183, 
note. 
Subtilty, what, 319, § 8. 
Succession, an idea got chiefly from the 
train of our ideas, 92, § 9: 121, § 6. 
Which train is the measure of it, 122, 
§ 12. 
Summum bonum, wherein it consists, 

168, § 55. 
Sun, the name of a species, though but 

one, 289, § 1. 
Syllogism, no help to reasoning, 437, § 4. 
The use of syllogism, ib. 
Inconveniences of syllogism, ib. 
Of no use in probabilities, 442, § 5. 
Helps not to new discoveries, ib. § 6. 
Or the improvement of our knowledge, 

ib. § 7. 
Whether, in syllogism, the middle 
terms may not be better placed, 
443, § 8. 
Maj be about particulars, ib. 
Taste and smells, their modes, 145, § 5. 
Testimony, how it lessens its force, 433, 

434, § 10. 
Thinking, 146. 

Modes of thinking, ib. § 1: 147, § 2. 
Men's ordinary way of thinking, 384, 

§4. 
An operation of the soul, 77, § 10. 
Without memory, useless, 79, § 15. 
Time, what, 123, § 17, 18. 

Not the measure of motion, 125, § 22. 



And place, distinguishable portions of 
infinite duration and expansion, 130, 
§5,6. 
Twofold, 130, 131, § 6, 7. 
Denominations from time are relatives. 
205, § 3. 
Toleration, necessary in our state of 

knowledge, 431, § 4. 
Tradition, the older, the less credible, 

433, 434, § 10. 
Trifling propositions, 403. 

Discourses, 406, 407, § 9, 10, 11. 
Truth, what, 387, § 2: 388, § 5: 389, 
§9. 
Of thought, 384, § 3: 389, § 9. 
Of words, 387, § 3. 
Verbal and real, 389, § 8, 9. 
Moral, 390, § 1 1. 
Metaphysical, 255, § 2: 390, § 11. 
General, seldom apprehended, but in 

words, 387, § 2. 
In what it consists, 385, § 5. 
Love of it necessary, 387, § 1. 
How we may know we love ; t, ib. 
Vacuum possible, 117, § 22. 

Motion proves a vacuum, 1 8, § 23. 
We have an idea of it, 87, § 3: 89, § 5. 
Variety in men's pursuits accounted for, 

168, § 54, &c. 
Virtue, what, in reality, 58, § 18. 

What in its common application, 55, § 

10, 11. 
Is preferable, under a bare possibility 

of a future state, 175, 176, § 70. 
How taken, 58, § 17, 18. 
Vice lies in wrong measures of good, 

463, § 16. 
Understanding, what, 152, § 5, 6. 
Like a darkroom, 109, §17. 
When rightly used, 34, § 5. 
Three sorts of perception in the under- 
standing, 152, § 5. 
Wholly passive in the reception of 
simple ideas, 83, § 25. 
Uneasiness alone determines the will to 
a new action, 158, &c. § 29. 31. 33, 
&c. 
Why it determines the will, 161, § 3G, 

37. 
Causes of it, 170, § 57, &c. 
Unity, an idea, both of sensation and re- 
flection, 91, § 7. 
Suggested by every thing, 134, § 1. 
Universality, is only in signs, 271, § 1! . 
Universals, how made, 107, § 9. 
Volition, what, 152, § 5: 154, § 15: 158, 
§ 28. 
Better known by reflection than words, 
159, § SO. 
Voluntary, what, 152, § 5: 153, § 11 
158, § 27. 



480 



OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



What is, is, is not universally assented 
to, 42, § 4. 

Where and when, 131, § 8. 

Whole bigger than its parts, its use, 
397, § 11. 

A.nd part not innate ideas, 63, § 6. 
Will, what, 152, § 5, 6: 155, § 16: 158, 
§ 29. 

What determines the will, ih. § 29. 

Often confounded with desire, 159, § 30. 

Is conversant only about our own ac- 
tions, ib. 

Terminates in them, 163, § 40. 

Is determined by the greatest, present 
removable uneasiness, ib. 
Wit and judgment, wherein different, 

106, § 2. 
Words, an ill use of words, one great 
hinderance of knowledge, 376, § 30. 

Abuse of words, 317. 

Sects introduce words without signifi- 
cation, ib. § 2. 

The schools have coined multitudes of 
insignificant words, ib. 

And rendered others obscure, 319, § 6. 

Often used without signification, 318, 
§3. 

And why, ib. § 5. 

Inconstancy in their use, an abuse of 
words, ib. 

Obscurity, an abuse of words, 319, § 6. 

Taking them for things, an abuse of 
words, 321, § 14, 15. 

Who most liable to this abuse of words, 
ib. 

This abuse of words is a cause of ob- 
stinacy in error, 322, § 16. 

Making them stand for real essences, 
which we know not. is an abuse of 
words, 322, 323, § 17, 18. 

The supposition of their certain, evi- 
dent signification, an abuse of words, 
324, § 22. 

Use of words, is, 1. To communicate 
ideas. 2. With quickness. 3. To 
convey knowledge, 325, § 23,24,25. 

How they fail in all these, ib. § 26, &c. 

How in substances, 326, § 32: 

How in modes and relations, ib. § 33. 

Misuse of words, a great cause of er- 
ror, 328, § 4. 

Of obstinacy, ib. § 5. 

And of wrangling, ib. § 6. 

Signify one thing, in inquiries; and 
another in disputes, 329, § 7. 



The meaning of words is mad>J known, 

in simple ideas, by showing, 331, 

§ 14. 
In mixed modes, by defining, ib. § 1 5. 
In substances, by showing and defining 

too, 332, § 19. 21, 22. 
The ill consequence of learning words 

first, and their meaning afterward, 

334, § '24. 
No shame to ask men the meaning of 

their words, where they are doubt- 
ful, ib. § 25. 
Are to be used constantly in the same 

sense, 335, § 26. 
Or else to be explained, where the 

context determines it not, ib. § 27. 
How made general, 265, § 3. 
Signifying insensible things, derived 

from names of sensible ideas, ib. § 5. 
Have no natural signification, 266, § 1. 
But by imposition, 268, § 8. 
Stand immediately for the ideas of the 

speaker, 266, 267, § 1, 2, S. 
Yet with a double reference. 

1. To the ideas, in the hearer's mind, 
267, § 4. 

2. To the reality of things, ib. § 5 
Apt, by custom, to excite ideas, 268, 

§6. 

Often used without signification, ib. § 7. 

Most general, 269, § 1. 

Why some words of one language can- 
not be translated into those of an- 
other, 286, § 8. 

Why I have been so large on word.*, 
288, § 16. 

New words, or in new significations, 
are cautiously to be used, 306, § 51. 

Civil use of words, 318, § 3. 

Philosophical use of words, 321, § S. 

These very different, ib. § 15. 

Miss their end, when they excite not, 
in the hearer, the same idea as in 
the mind of the speaker, 318, § 4. 

What words are most doubtful, and 
why, 319, § 5, &c. 

What unintelligible, ib. 

Are fitted to the use of common life. 
309, § 2. 

Not translatable, 286, § 8. 
Worship not an innate idea, 63, § 7. 
Wrangle, when we wrangle about words, 

313, § 13. 
Writings ancient, why hardly to be pre- 
cisely understood, 324, § 22. 



A TREATISE 



OS 



THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 



BY 



JOHN LOCKE GENT. 



Quid tam temerarium tamque indignum sapientis gravitate atque eonstantia, 
quam aut falsum sentire, aut quod non satis explorate perceptum sit, et cognitum, 
•ine ulla dubitatione defendere? — Cic. de JVatura Deorum, lib. I. 



3 L 481 



CONTENTS 



C* 



ESSAY OF THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING 



Sect. 1. Introduction. 

2. Parts. 

3. Reasoning. 

4. Of practice and habits. 

5. Ideas. 

6. Principles. 

7. Mathematics. 

8. Religion. 

9. Ideas. 

10. Prejudice. 

11. Indifferency. 

12. Examine. 

13. Observations. 

14. Bias. 

15. Arguments. 

16. Haste. 

17. Desultory. 

18. Smattering. 

19. Universality. 

20. Reading. 

21. Intermediate principles. 

22. Partiality. 



23. Theology. 

24. Partiality. 

25. Haste. 

26. Anticipation. 

27. Resignation. 

28. Practice. 

29. Words. 

30. Wandering. 

31. Distinction. 

32. Similes. 

33. Assent. 

34. 35. Indifferency. 

36. Question. 

37. Perseverance. 

38. Presumption. 

39. Despondency. 

40. Analogy. 

41. Association. 

42. Fallacies. 

43. Fundamental verities. 

44. Bottoming. 

45. Transferring of thoughts. 



48S 



OF THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDER 
STANDING. 



Sect. 1. Introduction. — The last resort a man has recourse to, in the con- 
duct of himself, is his understanding: for though we distinguish the faculties 
of the mind, and give the supreme command to the will, as to an agent ; yet 
the truth is, the man who is the agent, determines himself to this or that 
voluntary action, upon some precedent knowledge, or appearance of know- 
ledge, in the understanding. No man ever sets himself about any thing but 
upon some view or other, which serves him for a reason for what he does : 
and whatsoever faculties he employs, the understanding, with such light as 
it has, well or ill informed, constantly leads ; and by that light, true or false, 
all his operative powers are directed. The will itself, how absolute and un- 
controllable soever it may be thought, never fails in its obedience to the dic- 
tates of the understanding. Temples have their sacred images, and we see 
what influence they have always had over a great part of mankind. But, in 
truth, the ideas and images in men's minds are the invisible powers that con- 
stantly govern them ; and to these they all universally pay a ready submis- 
sion. It is, therefore, of the highest concernment that great care should be 
taken of the understanding, to conduct it right in the search of knowledge, 
and in the judgments it makes. 

The logic, now in use, has so long possessed the chair, as the only art 
taught in the schools, for the direction of the mind, in the study of the arts 
and sciences, that it would perhaps be thought an affectation of novelty to 
suspect, that rules, that have served the learned world these two or three 
thousand years, and which, without any complaint of defects, the learned 
have rested in, are not sufficient to guide the understanding. And I should 
not doubt but this attempt would be censured as vanity or presumption, did 
not the great lord Verulam's authority justify it ; who, not servilely thinking 
learning could not be advanced beyond what it was, because for many ages 
it had not been, did not rest in the lazy approbation and applause of what, 
was, because it was ; but enlarged his mind to what it might be. In his pre- 
face to his Novum Organum, concerning logic, he pronounces thus : " Qui 
summas dialectics partes tribuerunt, atque inde fidissima scientiis praesidia 
comparari putarunt, verissime et optima viderunt intellectum humanum, sibi 
permissum, merito suspectum esse debere. Verum infirmior omnino est 
malo medicina; nee ipsa mali expers. Siquidem dialectica, quae recepta est, 
licet ad civilia et artes, quse in sermone et opinione positae sunt, rectissimfe 
adhibeatur ; naturae tamen subtilitatem longo intervallo non attingit, et pren- 
sando quod non capit, ad errores potius stabiliendos et quasi figendos, quam 
ad viam veritati aperiendam valuit." 

" They," says he, " who attributed so much to logic, perceived very well 
and truly, that it was not safe to trust the understanding to itself without the 
guard of any rules. But the remedy reached not the evil, but became a part 
„*• u . *•„,. f i, Q \ n mn m which took place, though it might do well enough in civil 



486 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect. 1. 

affairs, and the arts, which consisted in talk and opinion ; yet comes very 
far short of subtlety, in the real performances of nature ; and, catching at 
what it cannot reach, has served to confirm and establish errors, rather than 
to open a way to truth." And therefore a little after he says, " That it is 
absolutely necessary that a better and perfecter use and employment of the 
mind and understanding should be introduced." " Necessari6 requiritur u: 
rnelior et perfectior mentis et intellectus humani usus et adoperatio intro- 
ducatur." 

Sect. 2. Parts. — There is, it is visible, great variety in men's understand- 
ings, and their natural constitutions put so wide a difference between somt 
men, in this respect, that art and industry would never be able to master: 
and their very natures seem to want a foundation to raise on it that which 
other men easily attain unto. Among men of equal education there is greai 
inequality of parts. And the woods of America, as well as the schools of 
Athens, produce men of several abilities in the same kind. Though this 
be so, yet I imagine most men come very short of what they might at- 
tain unto, in their several degrees, by a neglect of their understandings. A 
few rules of logic are thought sufficient, in this case, for those who pretend 
to the highest improvement ; whereas I think there are a great many natural 
defects in the understanding, capable of amendment ; which are overlooked 
and wholly neglected. And it is easy to perceive, that men are guilty of a 
great many faults in the exercise and improvement of this faculty of the mind, 
which hinder them in their progress, and keep them in ignorance and error 
all their lives. Some of them I shall take notice of, and endeavour to point 
out proper remedies for, in the following discourse. 

Sect. 3. Reasoning. — Besides the want of determined ideas, and of saga- 
city, and exercise in finding out, and laying in order, intermediate ideas': 
there are three miscarriages that men are guilty of, in reference to their rea - 
son, whereby this faculty is hindered in them from that service it might do, 
and was designed for. And he that reflects upon the actions and discourses 
of mankind, will find their defects in this kind very frequent, and very ob- 
servable. 

1. The first is of those who seldom reason at all, but do and think accord- 
ing to the example of others, whether parents, neighbours, ministers, or who 
else they are pleased to make choice of to have an implicit faith in, for the 
saving of themselves the pains and trouble of thinking and examining for 
themselves. 

2. The second is of those who put passion in the place of reason, and, being 
resolved that shall govern their actions and arguments, neither use their own. 
nor hearken to other people's reason, any farther than it suits their humour, 
interest, or party ; and these one may observe commonly content themselves 
with words which have no distinct ideas to them, though, in other matter? 
that they come with an unbiassed indifferency to, they want not abilities to 
talk and hear reason, where they have no secret inclination that hinders 
them from being intractable to it. 

3. The third sort is of those who readily and sincerely follow reason ; but, 
for want of having that which one may call large, sound, round-about sense, 
have not a full view of all that relates to the question, and may be of moment 
to decide it. We are all short-sighted, and very often see but one side of 
the matter; our views are not extended to all that has a connexion with it. 
From this defect I think no man is free. We see but in part, and we know but 
in part, and therefore it is no wonder we conclude not right from our partial 
views. This might instruct the proudest esteemer of his own parts, how 
useful it is to talk and consult with others, even such as come short of him 
in capacity, quickness, and penetration : for, since no one sees all, and we 
generally have different prospects of the same thing, according to our dif- 
ferent, as I may say, positions to it ; it is not incongruous to think, nor be- 
neath any man to try, whether another may not have notions of things which 
have escaped him, and which his reason would make use of if they came into 



Sect. 3. REASONING. 43? 

his mind. The faculty of reasoning seldom or never deceives those who 
trust to it ; its consequences, from what it builds on, are evident and certain ; 
but that which it oftenest, if not only, misleads us in, is, that the principles 
from which we conclude the grounds upon which we bottom our reasoning, are 
but a part, something is left out, which should go into the reckoning, to 
make it just and exact. Here we may imagine a vast and almost infinite 
advantage that angels and separate spirits may have over us ; who, in their 
several degrees of elevation above us, may be endowed with more compre- 
hensive faculties : and some of them, perhaps, having perfect and exact views 
of all finite beings that come under their consideration, can, as it were, in 
the twinkling of an eye, collect together all their scattered and almost bound- 
less relations. A mind so furnished, what reason has it to acquiesce in the 
certainty of its conclusions ! 

In this we may see the reason why some men of study and thought, that 
reason right, and are lovers of truth, do make no great advances in their dis- 
coveries of it. Error and truth are uncertainly blended in their minds ; their 
decisions are lame and defective, and they are very often mistaken in their judg- 
ments : the reason whereof is, they converse but with one sort of men, they 
read but one sort of books, they will not come in the hearing but of one sort 
of notions : the truth is, they canton out to themselves a little Goshen, in the 
intellectual world, where light shines, and, as they conclude, day blesses 
them ; but the rest of that vast expansum they give up to night and darkness, 
and so avoid coming near it. They have a pretty traffic with known corres- 
pondents, in some little creek ; within that they confine themselves, and are 
dexterous managers enough of the wares and products of that corner, with 
which they content themselves, but will not venture out into the great ocean 
of knowledge, to survey the riches that nature hath stored other parts with, 
no less genuine, no less solid, no less useful, than what has fallen to their 
lot in the admired plenty and sufficiency of their own little spot, which to 
them contains whatsoever is good in the universe. Those who live thus 
mewed up within their own contracted territories, and will not look abroad 
beyond the boundaries that chance, conceit, or laziness, has set to their in- 
quiries ; but live separate from the notions, discourses, and attainments of the 
rest of mankind ; may not amiss be represented by the inhabitants of the 
Marian islands, who, being separated, by a large tract of sea, from all com- 
munion with the habitable parts of the earth, thought themselves the only 
people of the world. And though the straitness of the conveniences of life 
among them had never reached so far as to the use of fire till the Spaniards, 
not many years since, in their voyages from Acapulco to Manilla, brought it 
among them, yet, in the want and ignorance of almost all things, they looked 
upon themselves, even after that the Spaniards had brought among them the 
notice of variety of nations, abounding in sciences, arts, and conveniences of 
life, of which they knew nothing; they looked upon themselves, I say, as the 
happiest and wisest people of the universe. But, for all that, nobody, I think, 
will imagine them deep naturalists, or solid metaphysicians; nobody will 
deem the quickest-sighted among them to have very enlarged views in ethics 
or politics ; nor can any one allow the most capable among them to be ad- 
vanced so far in his understanding as to have any other knowledge but of the 
few little things of his and the neighbouring islands, within his commerce ; 
but far enough from that comprehensive enlargement of mind, which adorns a 
soul devoted to truth, assisted with letters, and a free generation of the seve- 
ral views and sentiments of* thinking men of all sides. Let not men, there- 
fore, that would have a sight of what every one pretends to be desirous to 
have a sight of, truth in its full extent, narrow and blind their own prospect 
Let not men think there is no truth but in the sciences that they study, or 
books that they read. To prejudge other men's notions, before we have 
looked into them, is not to show their darkness, but to put out our own eyes. 
" Try all things, hold fast to that which is good," is a divine rule, coming 
from the Father of light and truth ; and it is hard to know what other way 



488 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect.. 3. 

men can come at truth, to lay hold of it, if they do not dig and search for it 
as for gold and hid treasure ; but he that does so must have much earth and 
rubbish, before he gets the pure metal : sand, and pebbles, and dross usually 
lie blended with it ; but the gold is nevertheless gold, and will enrich the man 
that employs his pains to seek and separate it. Neither is there any dangei 
he should be deceived by the mixture. Every man carries about him a touch- 
stone, if he will make use of it, to distinguish substantial gold from superfi- 
cial glitterings, truth from appearances. And, indeed, the use and benefit of 
this touchstone, whicli is natural reason, is spoiled and lost only by assumed 
prejudices, overweening presumption, and narrowing our minds. The want 
of exercising it, in the full extent of things intelligible, is that which weakens 
and extinguishes this noble faculty in us. Trace it, and see whether it be 
not so. The day labourer in a country village has commonly but a small 
pittance of knowledge, because his ideas and notions have been confined to 
the narrow bounds of a poor conversation and employment ; the low mecha- 
nic of a country town does somewhat outdo him ; porters and cobblers of 
great cities surpass him. A country gentleman who, leaving Latin and learn- 
ing in the university, removes thence to his mansion-house, and associates 
with neighbours of the same strain, who relish nothing but hunting and a 
bottle ; with those alone he spends his time, with those alone he converses, 
and can away with no company whose discourse goes beyond what claret and 
dissoluteness inspire : such a patriot, formed in this happy way of improve- 
ment, cannot fail, as we see, to give notable decisions upon the bench, at 
quarter sessions, and eminent proofs of his skill in politics, when the strength 
of his purse and party have advanced him to a more conspicuous station. 
To such a one, truly, an ordinary coffee-house gleaner of the city is an arrant 
statesman, and as much superior to, as a man conversant about Whitehall 
and the court is to an ordinary shopkeeper. To carry this a little farther : 
here is one muffled up in the zeal and infallibility of his own sect, and will 
not touch a book or enter into debate with a person that will question any 
of those things which to him are sacred. Another surveys our differences in 
religion with an equitable and fair indifference, and so finds, probably, that 
none of them are in every thing unexceptionable. These divisions and sys- 
tems were made by men, and carry the mark of fallible on them ; and in 
those whom he differs from, and, till he opened his eyes, had a general pre- 
judice against, he meets with more to be said for a great many things than 
before he was aware of, or could have imagined. Which of these two, now, 
is most likely to judge right in our religious controversies, and to be most 
stored with truth, the mark all pretend to aim at ? All these men, that I 
have instanced in, thus unequally furnished with truth, and advanced in 
knowledge, I suppose of equal natural parts ; all the odds between them has 
been the different scope that has been given to their understandings to 
range in, for the gathering up of information, and furnishing their heads with 
ideas and notions and observations, whereon to employ their mind and form 
their understandings. 

It will possibly be objected, " who is sufficient for all this?" I answer, 
more than can be imagined. Every one knows what his proper business is, 
and what, according to the character he makes of himself, the world may 
justly expect of him ; and, to answer that, he will find he will have time and 
opportunity enough to furnish himself, if he will not deprive himself, by a 
narrowness of spirit, of those helps that are at hand. I do not say to be a 
good geographer, that a man should visit every mountain, river, promontory, 
and creek, upon the face of the earth, view the buildings, and survey the 
land every where, as if he were going to make a purchase; but yet every 
one must allow that he shall know a country better, that makes often sanies 
into it, and traverses up and down, than he that, like a mill-horse, goes still 
round in the same track, or keeps within the narrow bounds of a field or two 
mat delight him. He that will inquire out the best books in every science, 
and inform himself of the most material authors of the several sects of philo- 



Sect. 3. REASONING. 469 

sophy and religion, will not find it an infinite work to acquaint himself with 
the sentiments of mankind, concerning- the most weighty and comprehensive 
subjects. Let him exercise the freedom of his reason and understanding in 
such a latitude as this, and his mind will be strengthened, his capacity en- 
larged, his faculties improved ; and the light, which the remote and scattered 
parts of truth will give to one another, will so assist his judgment, that he 
will seldom be widely out, or miss giving proof of a clear head and a com- 
prehensive knowledge. At least, this is the only way I know to give the 
understanding its due improvement to Ihe full extent of its capacity, and to 
distinguish the two most different things I know in the world, a logical chi- 
caner from a man of reason. Only he, that would thus give the rnmd its 
flight, and send abroad his inquiries into all parts after truth, must be sure to 
settle in his head determined ideas of all that he employs his thoughts about, 
and never fail to judge himself, and judge unbiassedly, of all that he receives 
from others, either in their writings or discourses. Reverence or prejudice 
must not be suffered to give beauty or deformity to any of their opinions. 

Sect. 4. Of 'practice and habits. — We are born with faculties and 
powers capable almost of any thing, such at least as would carry us farther 
than can easily be imagined : but it is only the exercise of those powers 
which gives us ability and skill in any thing, and leads us towards perfection. 

A middle-aged ploughman will scarce ever be brought to the carriage and 
language of a gentleman, though his body be as well proportioned, and his 
joints as supple, and his natural parts not any way inferior. The legs of a 
dancing-master, and the fingers of a musician, fall as it were naturally, with- 
out thought or pains, into regular and admirable motions. Bid them change 
their parts, and they will in vain endeavour to produce like motions in the 
members not used to them, and it will require length of time and long practice 
to attain but some degrees of a like ability. What incredible and astonishing 
actions do we find rope-dancers and tumblers bring their bodies to ! Not but 
that sundry, in almost all manual arts, are as wonderful ; but I name those 
which the world takes notice of for such, because on that very account they 
give money to see them. All these admired motions, beyond the reach and 
almost conception of unpractised spectators, are nothing but the mere effects 
of use and industry in men, whose bodies have nothing peculiar in them from 
those of the amazed lookers on. 

As it is in the body, so it is in the mind ; practice makes it what it is, and 
most even of those excellencies, which are looked on as natural endowments, 
will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to be the product of exer- 
cise, and to be raised to that pitch only by repeated actions. Some men are 
remarked for pleasantness in raillery ; others for apologues and apposite di- 
verting stories. This is apt to be taken for the effect of pure nature, and that, 
the rather, because it is not got by rules, and those who excel in either of 
them never purposely set themselves to the study of it, as an art to be learnt. 
But yet it is true that at first some lucky hit, which took with somebody, and 
gained him commendation, encouraged Kim to try again, inclined his thoughts 
and endeavours that way, till at last he insensibly got a facility in it, without 
perceiving how ; and that is attributed wholly to nature, which was much 
more the effect of use and practice. I do not deny that natural disposition 
may often give the first rise to it, but that never carries a man far, without 
use and exercise; and it is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind, 
as well as those of the body, to their perfection. Many a good poetic vein 
is buried under a trade, and never produces any thing for want of improve- 
ment. We see the ways of discourse and reasoning are very different, even 
concerning the same matter, at court and in the university. And he that will 
go but from Westminster-hall to the Exchange, will find a different genius 
and turn in their ways of talking ; and yet one cannot think that all whose 
lot fell in the city were born with different parts from those who were bred 
at the university or inns of court. 

To what purpose all this, but to show that the difference, so observable in 
3M 



490 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect. 4. 

men's understandings and parts, does not arise so much from their natural 
faculties as acquired habits. He would be laughed at, that should go about 
to make a fine dancer out of a country hedger, at past fifty. And he will not 
have much better success, who shall endeavour, at that age, to make a man 
reason well, or speak handsomely, who has never been used to it, though you 
should lay before him a collection of all the best precepts of logic or oratory. 
Nobody is made any thing by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his 
memory ; practice must settle the habit of doing, without reflecting on the 
rule ; and you may as well hope to make a good painter or musician extem- 
pore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and painting, as a co- 
herent thinker, or a strict reasoner, by a set of rules showing him wherein 
right reasoning consists. 

This being so, that defects and weakness in men's understandings, as well 
as other faculties, come from want of a right use of their own minds ; I am apt 
to think the fault is generally mislaid upon nature, and there is often a com- 
plaint of want of parts, when the fault lies in want of a due improvement of 
them. We see men frequently dexterous and sharp enough in making a bargain, 
who, if you reason with them about matters of religion, appear perfectly stupid. 

Sect. 5. Ideas. — I will not here, in what relates to the right conduct and 
improvement of the understanding, repeat again the getting clear and deter- 
mined ideas, and the employing our thoughts rather about them than about 
sounds put for them ; nor of settling the signification of words, which we 
use with ourselves in the search of truth, or with others, in discoursing about 
it. Those hinderances of our understandings in the pursuit of knowledge I 
have sufficiently enlarged upon in another place ; so that nothing more needs 
here to be said of those matters. 

Sect. 6. Principles. — There is another fault that stops or misleads men 
in their knowledge, which I have also spoken something of, but yet is neces- 
sary to mention here again, that we may examine it to the bottom, and see 
the root it springs from ; and that is a custom of taking up with principles 
that are not self-evident, and very often not so much as true. It is not unu- 
sual to see men rest their opinions upon foundations that have no more cer- 
tainty and solidity than the propositions built on them and embraced for 
their sake. Such foundations are these and the like, viz. — the founders or 
leaders of my party are good men, and therefore their tenets are true ; — it is 
the opinion of a sect that is erroneous, therefore it is false : — it hath been long 
received in the world, therefore it is true ; or — it is new, and therefore false. 

These and many the like, which are by no means the measures of truth 
and falsehood, the generality of men make the standards by which they ac- 
custom their understanding to judge. And thus, they falling into a habit of 
determining of truth and falsehood by such wrong measures, it is no wonder 
they should embrace error for certainty, and be very positive in things they 
have no ground for. 

There is not any, who pretends to the least reason, but, when any of these 
his false maxims are brought to the test, must acknowledge them to be fallible, 
and such as he will not allow in those that differ from him ; and yet, after he 
is convinced of this, you shall see him go on in the use of them, and, the 
very next occasion that offers, argue again upon the same grounds. Would 
one not be ready to think that men are willing to impose upon themselves 
and mislead their own understandings, who conduct them by such wrong 
measures, even after they see they cannot be relied on 1 But yet they will 
not appear so blameable as may be thought at first sight ; for I think there 
are a great many that argue thus in earnest, and do it not to impose on them- 
selves or others. They are persuaded of what they say, and think there is 
weight in it, though in a like case they have been convinced there is none 
but men would be intolerable to themselves, and contemptible to others, if 
they should embrace opinions without any ground, and hold what they could 
give no manner of reason for. True or false, solid or sandy, the mmd mus . 
have some foundation to rest itself upon; and, as I have remarked in another 



Sect. 6. PRINCIPLES. 491 

place, it no sooner entertains any proposition, but it presently hastens to 
some hypothesis to bottom it on ; till then it is unquiet and unsettled. So 
much do our own very tempers dispose us to a right use of our understand- 
ings, if we would follow, as we should, the inclinations of our nature. 

In some matters of concernment, especially those of religion, men are 
not permitted to be always wavering and uncertain ; they must embrace and 
profess some tenets or other ; and it would be a shame, nay a contradiction too 
heavy for any one's mind to lie constantly under, for him to pretend seriously 
to be persuaded of the truth of any religion, and yet not to be able to give any 
reason of his belief, or to say any thing for his preference of this to any other 
opinion : and therefore they must make use of some principles or other, and 
those can be no other than such as they have and can manage ; and to say 
they are not in earnest persuaded by them, and do not rest upon those they 
make use of, is contrary to experience, and to allege that they are not misled 
when we complain they are. 

If this be so, it will be urged, w T hy then do they not make use of sure and 
unquestionable principles, rather than rest on such grounds as may deceive 
them, and will, as is visible, serve to support error as well as truth'? 

To this I answer, the reason why they do not make use of better and surer 
principles is because they cannot : but this inability proceeds not from want 
of natural parts (for those few, whose case that is, are to be excused), but 
for want of use and exercise. Few men are, from their youth, accustomed 
to strict reasoning, and to trace the dependence of any truth, in a long train 
of consequences, to its remotest principles, and to observe its connexion ; 
and he that by frequent practice has not been used to this employment of his 
understanding, it is no more wonder that he should not, when he is grown 
into years, be able to bring his mind to it, than that he should not be on a 
sudden, able to grave or design, dance on the ropes or write a good hand, 
who has never practised either of them. 

Nay, the most of men are so wholly strangers to this, that they do not so 
much as perceive their want of it ; they despatch the ordinary business of 
their callings by rote, as we say, as they have learnt it ; and if at any time 
they miss success, they impute it to any thing rather than want of thought or 
skill ; that they conclude (because they know no better) they have in perfec- 
tion : or, if there be any subject that interest or fancy has recommended to 
their thoughts, their reasoning about it is still after their own fashion ; be it 
better or worse, it serves their turns, and is the best they are acquainted 
with ; and, therefore, when they are led by it into mistakes, and their business 
succeeds accordingly, they impute it to any cross accident or default of others, 
rather than to their own want of understanding ; that is what nobody disco- 
vers or complains of in himself. Whatsoever made his business to miscarry, 
it was not want of right thought, and judgment in himself: he sees no such 
defect in himself, but is satisfied that he carries on his designs well enough 
by his own reasoning, or at least should have done, had it not been for un- 
lucky traverses not in his power. Thus, being content with this short and 
very imperfect use of his understanding, he never troubles himself to seek 
out methods of improving his mind, and lives all his life without any notion 
of close reasoning, in a continued connexion of a long train of consequences 
from sure foundations ; such as is requisite for the making out and clearing 
most of the speculative truths most men own to believe, and are most con- 
cerned in. Not to mention here, what I shall have occasion to insist on by 
and by more fully, viz. that in many cases it is not one series of conse- 
quences will serve the turn, but many different and opposite deductions must 
be examined and laid together, before a man can come to make a right judg- 
ment of the point in question. What then can be expected from men that 
neither see the want of any such kind of reasoning as this : nor, if they do, 
know how to set about it, or could perform it 1 You may as well set a coun- 
tryman, who scarce knows the figures, and never cast up a sum of three par- 
ticulars, to state a merchant's long account, and find the true balance of it. 



492 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect. 6 

What then should be done in the case 1 I answer, we should always re- 
member what I said above, that the faculties of our souls are improved and 
made useful to us, just after the same manner as our bodies are. Would 
you have a man write or paint, dance or fence well, or perform any other 
manual operation dexterously and with ease ; let him have ever so much 
vigour and activity, suppleness and address naturally, yet nobody expects this 
from him, unless he has been used to it, and has employed time and pains in 
fashioning and forming his hand, or outward parts to these motions. Just so 
it is in the mind : would you have a man reason well, you must use him to it 
betimes, exercise his mind in observing the connexion of ideas, and following 
them in train. Nothing does this better than mathematics, which, therefore, 
I think should be taught all those who have the time and opportunity ; not so 
much to make them mathematicians, as to make them reasonable creatures ; 
for though we all call ourselves so, because we are born to it, if we please , 
yet we may truly say, nature gives us but the seeds of it : we are born to be, 
if we please, rational creatures ; but it is use and exercise only that make us 
so, and we are, indeed, so no farther than industry and application have car- 
ried us. And, therefore, in ways of reasoning, which men have not been 
used to, he that will observe the conclusions they take up, must be satisfied 
they are not all rational. 

This has been the less taken notice of, because every one, in his private 
affairs, uses some sort of reasoning or other, enough to denominate him rea- 
sonable. But the mistake is, that he that is found reasonable in one thing is 
concluded to be so in all, and to think or to. say otherwise is thought so unjust 
an affront, and so senseless a ^ensure, that nobody ventures to do it. It looks 
like the degradation of a man below the dignity of his nature. It is true, 
that he that reasons well in any one thing has a mind naturally capable of 
reasoning well in others, and to the same degree of strength and clearness, 
and possibly much greater, had his understanding been so employed. But it 
is as true that he who can reason well to-day about one sort of matters, can- 
not at all reason to 'lay about others, though perhaps a year hence he may. 
But wherever a man's rational faculty fails him, and will not serve him to 
reason, there we cannot say he is rational, how capable soever he may be, by 
time and exercise, to become so. 

Try in men of low and mean education, who have never elevated thejr 
thoughts above the spade and the plough nor looked beyond the ordinary 
drudgery of a day-labourer. Take the thoughts of such an one, used for 
many years to one track, out of that narrow compass, he has been all his life 
confined to, you will find him no more capable of reasoning than almost a 
perfect natural. Some one or two rules, on which their conclusions imme- 
diately depend, you will find in most men have governed all their thoughts ; 
these, true or false, have been the maxims they have been guided by ; take 
these from them, and they are perfectly at a loss, their compass and pole-star 
then are gone, and their understanding is perfectly at a nonplus ; and there- 
fore they either immediately return to their old maxims again, as the founda- 
tions of all truth to them, notwithstanding all that can be said to show their 
weakness ; or if they give them up to their reasons, they, with them, give 
up all truth and farther inquiry, and think there is no such thing as certainty. 
For if you would enlarge their thoughts, and settle them upon more remote 
and surer principles, they either cannot easily apprehend them ; or, if they 
can, know not what use to make of them ; for long deductions from remote 
principles are what they have not been used to, and cannot manage. 

What then, can grown men never be improved, or enlarged in their under- 
standings 1 I say not so ; but this I think I may say, that it will not be done 
without industry and application, which will require more time and pains than 
grown men, settled in their course of life, will allow to it, and therefore very 
seldom is done. And this very capacity of attaining it, by use and exercise 
only, brings us back to that which 1 laid dov/n before, that it is only practice 



Sect. 6. PRINCIPLES. 49? 

that improves our minds as well as bodies, and we must expect nothing from 
our understandings, any farther than they are perfected by habits. 

The Americans are not all born with worse understandings than the Eu- 
ropeans, though we see none of them have such reaches in the arts and 
sciences. And, among the children of a poor countryman, the lucky chance 
of education, and getting into the world, gives one infinitely the superiority 
in parts over the rest, who, continuing at home, had continued also just of 
the same size with his brethren. 

He that has to do with young scholars,' especially in mathematics, may 
perceive how their minds open by degrees, and how it is exercise alone that 
opens them. Sometimes they will stick a long time at a part of demonstra- 
tion, not for want of will and application, but really for want of perceiving 
the connexion of two ideas, that, to one whose understanding is more exer- 
cised, is as visible as any thing can be. The same would be with a grown 
man beginning to study mathematics ; the understanding, for want of use, 
often sticks in every plain way, and he himself that is so puzzled, when he 
comes to see the connexion, wonders what it was he stuck at, in a case so 
plain. 

Sect. 7. Mathematics. — I have mentioned mathematics as a way to settle 
in the mind a habit of reasoning closely and in train ; not that I think it ne- 
cessary that ah men should be deep mathematicians, but that, having got the 
way of reasoning, which that study necessarily brings the mind to, they might 
be able to transfer it to other parts of knowledge, as they shall have occasion. 
For, in all sorts of reasoning, every single argument should be managed as a 
mathematical demonstration : the connexion and dependence of ideas should 
be followed, till the mind is brought to the source on which it bottoms, and 
observes the coherence all along, though in proofs of probability one such 
train is not enough to settle the judgment, as in demonstrative knowledge. 

Where a truth is made out by one demonstration, there needs no farther 
inquiry ; but in probabilities, wlfire there wants demonstration to establish 
the truth beyond doubt, there it is not enough to trace one argument to its 
source, and observe its strength and weakness, but all the arguments, after 
having been so examined on both sides, must be laid in balance one against 
another, and, upon the whole, the understanding determine its assent. 

This is a way of reasoning the understanding should be accustomed to, 
which is so different from what the illiterate are used to, that even learned 
men oftentimes seem to have very little or no notion of it. Nor is it to be 
wondered, since the way of disputing, in the schools, leads them quite away 
from it, by insisting on one topical argument, by the success of which the 
truth or falsehood of the question is to be determined, and victory adjudged 
to the opponent or defendant ; which is all one as if one should balance an 
account by one sum, charged and discharged, when there are an hundred 
others to be taken into consideration. 

This, therefore, it would be well if men's minds were accustomed to, and 
that early ; that they might not erect their opinions upon one single view, 
when so many other are requisite to make up the account, and must come 
into the reckoning, before a man can form a right judgment. This would 
enlarge their minds, and give a due freedom to their understandings, that they 
might not be led into error by presumption, laziness, or precipitancy ; for 1 
think nobody can approve such a conduct of the understanding as should 
mislead it from truth, though it be ever so much in fashion to make use of it. 
To this perhaps it will be objected, that to manage the understanding as I 
propose, would require every man to be a scholar, and to be furnished with 
all the materials of knowledge, and exercised in all the ways of reasoning. 
To which I answer, that it is a shame for those that have time, and the means 
to attain knowledge, to want any helps or assistance, for the improvement 
of their understandings, that are to be got ; and to such I would be thought 
here chiefly to speak. Those methinks who, by the industry and parts of 
their ancestors, have been set free from a constant drudgery to their backs 



494 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect. 7. 

and their bellies, should bestow some of their spare time on their heads, and 
open their minds, by some trials and essays, in all the sorts and matters o* 
reasoning. I have before mentioned mathematics, wherein algebra gives nevj 
nelps and views to the understanding. If I propose these, it is not, as I said, 
to make every man a thorough mathematician, or a deep algebraist ; but yet 
I think the study of them is of infinite use, even to grown men ; first, by ex- 
perimentally convincing them, that to make any one reason well, it is not 
enough to have parts wherewith he is satisfied, and that serve him well enough 
in his ordinary course. A man in those studies will see, that however good he 
may think his understanding, yet in many things, and those very visible, it may 
fail him. This would take off that presumption that most men have of them- 
selves in this part ; and they would not be so apt to think their minds wanted 
no helps to enlarge them, that there could be nothing added to the acuteness 
and penetration of their understandings. 

Secondly, The study of mathematics would show them the necessity there 
is in reasoning to separate all the distinct ideas, and see the habitudes that 
all those concerned in the present inquiry have to one another, and to lay by 
those which relate not to the proposition in hand, and wholly to leave them 
out of the reckoning. This is that which in other subjects, besides quantity, 
is what is absolutely requisite to just reasoning, though in them it is not so 
easily observed, nor so carefully practised. In those parts of knowledge 
where it is thought demonstration has nothing to do, men reason as it were 
in the lump ; and if, upon a summary and confused view, or upon a partial 
consideration, they can raise the appearance of a probability, they usually 
rest content ; especially if it be in a dispute where every little straw is laid 
hold on, and every thing that can but be drawn in any way to give colour to 
the argument is advanced with ostentation. But that mind is not in a pos- 
ture to find the truth, that does not distinctly take all the parts asunder, and. 
omitting what is not at all to the point, draw a conclusion from the result of 
all the particulars which any way influence it. There is another no less use- 
ful habit to be got by an application to mathematical demonstrations, and that 
is, of using the mind to a long train of consequences ; but having mentioned 
that already, I shall not again here repeat it. 

As to men whose fortunes and time are narrower, what may suffice them 
is not of that vast extent as may be imagined, and so comes not within the 
objection. 

Nobody is under an obligation to know every thing. Knowledge and 
science in general is the business only of those who are at ease and lei- 
sure. Those who have particular callings ought to understand them ; and it 
is no unreasonable proposal, nor impossible to be compassed, that they should 
think and reason right about what is their daily employment. This one can- 
not think them incapable of, without levelling them with the brutes, and 
charging them with a stupidity below the rank of rational creatures. 

Sect. 8. Religion. — Besides his particular calling for the support of this 
life, every one has a concern in a future life, which he is bound to look after. 
This engages his thoughts in religion ; and here it mightily lies upon him to 
understand and reason right. Men, therefore, cannot be excused from un- 
derstanding the words, and framing the general notions relating to religion, 
right. The one day of seven, besides other days of rest, allows- in the Chris- 
tian world time enough for this (had they no other idle hours) if they would 
but make use of these vacancies from their daily labour, and apply themselves 
to an improvement of knowledge with as much diligence as they often do to 
a great many other things that are useless, and had but those that would en- 
ter them according to their several capacities in a right way to this know- 
ledge. The original make of their minds is like that of other men, and they 
would be found not to want understanding fit to receive the knowledge of re- 
ligion, if they were a little encouraged and helped in it, as they should be. 
For there are instances of very mean people, who have raised their minds t? 
a great sense and understanding of religion : and though thesa ha^t no' boeu 



Sect. 8, RELIGION. 495 

so frequent as could be wished, yet they are enough to clear that condition 
of life from a necessity of gross ignorance, and to show that more might be 
brought to be rational creatures and Christians (for they can hardly be thought 
really to be so, who, wearing the name, know not so much as the very prin- 
ciples of that religion) if due care were taken of them. For, if I mistake not, 
the peasantry lately in France (a rank of people under, a much heavier pres- 
sure of want and poverty than the day-labourers in England) of the reformed 
religion understood it much better, and could say more for it than those of a 
higher condition among us. 

But if it shall be concluded that the meaner sort of people must give them- 
selves up to brutish stupidity in things of their nearest concernment, which I 
see no reason for, this excuses not those of a freer fortune and education, if 
they neglect their understandings, and take no care to employ them as they 
ought, and set them right in the knowledge of those things for which prin- 
cipally they were given them. At least those, whose plentiful fortunes allow 
them the opportunities and helps of improvements, are not so few, but that 
it might be hoped great advancements might be made in knowledge of ail 
kinds, especially in that of the greatest concern and largest views, if men 
would make a right use of their faculties, and study their own understandings. 

Sect. 9. Ideas. — Outward corporeal objects, that constantly importune 
our senses and captivate our appetites, fail not to fill our heads with lively 
and lasting ideas of that kind. Here the mind needs not to be set up upon 
getting greater store ; they offer themselves fast enough, and are usually en- 
tertained with such plenty, and lodged so carefully, that the mind wants room oi 
attention for others that it has more use and need of. To fit the understanding, 
therefore, for such reasoning as I have been above speaking of, care should be 
taken to fill it with moral and more abstract ideas ; for these not offering 
themselves to the senses, but being to be framed to the understanding, people 
are generally so neglectful of a faculty they are apt to think wants nothing, 
that I fear most men's minds are more unfurnished with such ideas than is 
imagined. They often use the words, and how can they be suspected to 
want the ideas ! What I have said in the third book of my Essay will ex- 
cuse me from any other answer to this question. But to convince people of 
what moment it is to their understandings to be furnished with such abstract 
ideas, steady and settled in them, give me leave to ask, how any one shall be 
able to know whether he be obliged to be just, if he has not established ideas 
in his mind of obligation and of justice ; since knowledge consists in nothing 
but the perceived agreement or disagreement of those ideas ? and so of all 
others the like, which concern our lives and manners. And if men do find a 
difficulty to see the agreement or disagreement of two angles, which lie be- 
fore their eyes unalterable in a diagram; how utterly impossible will it be to 
perceive it in ideas that have no other sensible object to represent them to 
the mind but sounds, with which they have no manner of conformity, and 
therefore had need to be clearly settled in the mind themselves, if we would 
make any clear judgment about them. This, therefore, is one of the first 
things the mind should be employed about, in the right conduct of the under- 
standing, without which it is impossible it should be capable of reasoning 
right about those matters. But in these, and all other ideas, care must be 
taken that they harbour no inconsistencies, and that they have a real exist- 
ence where real existence is supposed ; and are not mere chimeras with a 
supposed existence. 

Sect. 10. Prejudice. — Every one is forward to complain of the prejudices 
that mislead other men or parties, as if he were free, and had none of his 
own. This being objected on all sides, it is agreed that it is a fault and an 
hinderance to knowledge. What now is the cure 1 No other but this, that 
every man should let alone others' prejudices, and examine his own. Nobody 
is convinced of his by the accusation of another: he recriminates by the same 
rule, and is clear. The only way to remove this great cause of ignorance 
and error out of the world is, for every one impartially to examine himself. 



496 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect. 10. 

If others will not deal fairly with their own minds, does that make my errors 
truths ? or ought it to make me in love with them, and willing to impose on 
myself] If others love cataracts in their eyes, should that hinder me from 
couching of mine as soon as I can] Every one declares against blindness, 
and yet who almost is not fond of that which dims his sight, and keeps the 
clear light out of his mind, which should lead him into truth and knowledge ? 
False or doubtful positions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those 
in the dark from truth who build on them. Such are usually the prejudices 
imbibed from education, party, reverence, fashion, interest, &c. This is the 
mote which every one sees in his brother's eye, but never regards the beam 
in his own. For who is there almost that is ever brought fairly to examine 
his own principles, and see whether they are such as will bear the trial 1 
But yet this should be one of the first things every one should set about, and 
be scrupulous in, who would rightly conduct his understanding in the search 
of truth and knowledge. 

To those who are willing to get rid of this great hinderance of knowledge 
(for to such only I write), to those who would shake off this great and danger- 
ous impostor, prejudice, who dresses up falsehood in the likeness of truth, 
and so dexterously hoodwinks men's minds, as to keep them in the dark, 
with a belief that they are more in the light than any that do not see with 
their eyes, — I shall offer this one mark whereby prejudice may be known. 
He that is strongly of any opinion must suppose (unless he be self-con- 
demned) that his persuasion is built upon good grounds ; and that his assent 
is no greater than what the evidence of the truth he holds forces him to; and 
that they are arguments, and not inclination, or fancy, that make him so 
confident and positive in his tenets. Now if, after all his profession, he can- 
not bear any opposition to his opinion, if he cannot so much as give a patient 
hearing, much less examine and weigh the arguments on the other side, does 
he not plainly confess it is prejudice governs him? and it is not the evidence 
of truth, but some lazy anticipation, some beloved presumption, that he de- 
sires to rest undisturbed in. For, if what he holds be, as he gives out, well 
fenced with evidence, and he sees it to be true, what need he fear to put it 
to the proof] If his opinion be settled upon a firm foundation, if the argu- 
ments that support it, and have obtained his assent, be clear, good, and con- 
vincing, why should he be shy to have it tried whether they be proof or not *? 
He whose assent goes beyond this evidence, owes this excess of his adhe- 
rence only to prejudice, and does in effect own it, when he refuses to hear 
what is offered against it ; declaring thereby that it is not evidence he seeks, 
but the quiet enjoyment of the opinion he is fond of, with a forward condem- 
nation of all that may stand in opposition to it, unheard and unexamined ; 
which, what is it but prejudice 3 qui cequum statuerit, parte inauditd altera 
etiamsi aquum statuerit, haud cequus fuerit. He that would acquit himscf 
in this case as a lover of truth, not giving way to any pre-occupation or bias 
that may mislead him, must do two things that are not very common nor 
very easy. 

Sect. 11. Indifferency. — First, He must not be in love with any opinion, 
or wish it to be true, till he knows it to be so, and then he will not need to 
wish it ; for nothing that is false can deserve our good wishes, nor a desire 
that it should have the place and force of truth ; and yet nothing is more fre- 
quent than this. Men are fond of certain tenets upon no other evidence but 
respect and custom, and think they must maintain them, or all is gone ; 
though they have never examined the ground they stand on, nor have ever 
made them out to themselves, or can make them out to others : we should 
contend earnestly for the truth, but we should first be sure that it is truth, or 
else we fight against God, who is the God of truth, and do the work of the 
devil, who is the father and propagator of lies; and our zeal, though ever so 
warm, will not excuse us, for this is plainly prejudice. 

Sect. 12. Examine. — Secondly, He must do that which he will find him- 
self very averse to, as judging the thing unnecessary, or himself incapable of 



Sect. 12. EXAMINE. 497 

doing 1 it. He must try whether his principles be certainly true, or not, and 
how far he may safely rely upon them. This, whether fewer have the heart 
or the skill to do, I shall not determine ; but this, I am sure, is that which every 
one ought to do, who professes to love truth, and would not impose upon 
himself; which is a surer way to be made a fool of than by being exposed to 
the sophistry of others. The disposition to put any cheat upon ourselves 
works constantly, and we are pleased with it, but are impatient of being ban- 
tered or misled by others. The inability I here speak of is not any natural 
defect that makes men incapable of examining their own principles. To 
such, rules of conducting their understandings are useless ; and that is the 
case of very few. The great number is of those whom the ill habit of never 
exerting their thoughts has disabled ; the powers of their minds are starved 
by disuse, and have lost that reach and strength which nature fitted them to 
receive from exercise. Those who are in a condition to learn the first rules 
of plain arithmetic, and could be brought to cast up an ordinary sum, are 
capable of this, if they had but accustomed their minds to reasoning: but they 
that have wholly neglected the exercise of their understandings in this way, 
will be very far, at first, from being able to do it, and as unfit for it as one 
unpractised in figures to cast up a shop-book, and, perhaps, think it as strange 
to be set about it. And yet it must nevertheless be confessed to be a wrong 
use of our understandings, to build our tenets (in things where we are con- 
cerned to hold the truth) upon principles that may lead us into error. We 
take our principles at hap-hazard, upon trust, and without ever having ex- 
amined them, and then believe a whole system, upon a presumption that they 
are true and solid ; and what is all this but childish, shameful, senseless cre- 
dulity 1 

In these two things, viz. an equal indifferency for all truth; I mean the re- 
ceiving it, the love of it, as truth, but not loving it for any other reason, be- 
fore we know it to be true ; and in the examination of our principles, and not 
receiving any for such, nor building on them, till we are fully convinced, as 
rational creatures, of their solidity, truth, and certainty; consists that free- 
dom of the understanding which is necessary to a rational creature, and with- 
out which it is not truly an understanding. It is conceit, fancy, extravagance, 
any thing rather than understanding, if it must be under the constraint of 
receiving and holding opinions by the authority of any thing but their own, 
not fancied, but perceived, evidence. This was rightly called imposition, 
•and is of all other the worst and most dangerous sort of it. For we impose 
upon ourselves, which is the strongest imposition of all others ; and we im- 
pose upon ourselves in that part which ought with the greatest care to be kept 
free from all imposition. The world is apt to cast great blame on those who 
have an indifferency of opinions, especially in religion. I fear this is the 
foundation of great error and worse consequences. To be indifferent which 
of two opinions is true, is the right temper of the mind that preserves it from 
being imposed on, and disposes it to examine with that indifferency, till it has 
done its best to find the truth, and this is the only direct and safe way to it. 
But to be indifferent whether we embrace falsehood or truth, is the great road 
to error. Those who are not indifferent which opinion is true, are guilty of 
this ; they suppose, without examining, that what they hold is true, and they 
think they ought to be zealous for it. Those, it is plain by their warmth and 
eagerness, are not indifferent for their own opinions, but methinks are very 
indifferent whether they be true or false ; since they cannot endure to have 
any doubts raised, or objections made against them ; and it is visible they 
never have made any themselves, and so, never having examined them, know 
not, nor are concerned, as they should be, to know whether they be true or 
false. 

These are the common and most general miscarriages which I think 

men should avoid or rectify, in a right conduct of their understandings, and 

should be particularly taken care of in education. The business whereof, in 

respect of knowledge, is not, as I think, to perfect a learner in all or anv one 

3N 



498 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect. 12. 

of the sciences, but to give his mind that freedom, that disposition, and those 
habits, that may enable him to attain any part of knowledge he shall apply 
himself to, or stand in need of in the future course of his life. 

This, and this only, js well principting, and not the instilling a reverence 
and veneration for certain dogmas, under the specious title of principles, 
which are often so remote from that truth and evidence which belongs to 
principles, that they ought to be rejected, as false and erroneous ; and often 
cause men so educated, when they come abroad into the world, and find they 
cannot maintain the principles so taken up and rested in, to cast off all prin- 
ciples, and turn perfect sceptics, regardless of knowledge and virtue. 
1 There are several weaknesses and defects in the understanding, either 
from the natural temper of the mind, or ill habits taken up, which hinder it 
in its progress to knowledge. Of these, there are as many, possibly, to be 
found, if the mind were thoroughly studied, as there are diseases of the body, 
each whereof clogs and disables the understanding to some degree, and 
therefore deserves to be looked after and cured. I shall set down some few 
to excite men, especially those who make knowledge their business, to look 
into themselves, and observe whether they do not indulge some weaknesses, 
allow some miscarriages in the management of their intellectual faculty, which 
is prejudicial to them in the search of truth. 

Sect. 13. Observations. — Particular matters of fact are the undoubted 
foundations on which our civil and natural knowledge is built : the benefit the 
understanding makes of them is to draw from them conclusions, which may 
be as standing rules of knowledge, and consequently of practice. The mind 
often makes not that benefit it should of the information it receives from the 
accounts of civil or natural historians, by being too forward or too slow in 
making observations on the particular facts recorded in them. 

There are those who are very assiduous in reading, and yet do not much 
advance their knowledge by it. They are delighted with the stories that are 
told, and perhaps can tell them again, for they make all they read nothing 
but history to themselves : but not reflecting on it, not making to themselves 
observations from what they read, they are very little improved by all that 
crowd of particulars, that either pass through, or lodge themselves in their 
understanding. They dream on in a constant course of reading and cram- 
ming themselves ; but not digesting any thing, it produces nothing but a heap 
of crudities. 

If their memories retain well, one may say, they have the materials of 
knowledge ; but, like those for building, they are of no advantage, if there be 
no other use made of them but to let them lie heaped up together. Opposite 
to these, there are others who lose the improvement they should make of 
matters of fact by a quite contrary conduct. They are apt to draw general 
conclusions, and raise axioms from every particular they meet with. These 
make as little true benefit of history as the other ; nay, being of forward and 
active spirits, receive more harm by it ; it being of worse consequence to 
steer one's thoughts by a wrong rule, than to have none at all ; error doing 
to busy men much more harm than ignorance to the slow and sluggish. Be- 
tween these, those seem to do best, who taking material and useful hints, 
sometimes from single matters of fact, carry them in their minds to be judged 
of, by what they shall find in history, to confirm or reverse these imperfect 
observations ; which may be established into rules fit to be relied on, when 
they are justified by a sufficient and wary induction of particulars. He that 
makes no such reflections on what he reads, only loads his mind with a rhap- 
sody of tales, fit, in winter-nights, for the entertainment of others : and he 
that will improve every matter of fact into a maxim, will abound in contrary 
observation, that can be of no other use but to perplex and pudder him, if he 
compares them ; or else to misguide him, if he gives himself up to the 
authority of that, which for its novelty, or for some other fancy, best pleases 
him. 

Sect. 14. Bias. — Next to these, we may place those who suffer their 



Sect. ±4. BIAS. 499 

own natural tempers and passions they are possessed with to influence their 
judgments, especially of men and things, that may any way relate to theii 
present circumstances and interest. Truth is all simple, all pure, will beai 
no mixture of any thing else with it. It is rigid and inflexible to any by in- 
terest ; and so should the understanding be, whose use and excellency lies 
in conforming itself to it. To think of every thing just as it is in itself is 
the proper business of the understanding, though it be not that which men 
always employ it to. This all men, at first hearing, allow is the right use 
every one should make of his understanding. Nobody will be at such an 
open defiance with common sense as to profess that we should not endeavour 
to know and think of things as they are in themselves ; and yet there is 
nothing more frequent than to do the contrary ; and men are apt to excuse 
themselves ; and think they have reason to do so, if they have but a pretence 
that it is for God, or a good cause ; that is, in effect, for themselves, their 
own persuasion, or party : for those in tbeir turns the several sects of men, 
especially in matters of religion, entitle God and a good cause. But God 
requires not men to wrong or misuse their faculties for him, nor to lie to 
others, or themselves, for his sake ; which they purposely do, who will not 
suffer their understandings to have right conceptions of the things proposed 
to them and designedly restrain themselves from having just thoughts of every 
thing, as far as they are concerned to inquire. And as for a good cause, 
that needs not such ill helps ; if it be good, truth will support it, and it has no 
need of fallacy or falsehood. 

Sect. 15. Arguments. — Very much of kin to this is the hunting after 
arguments to make good one side of a question, and wholly to neglect and 
refuse those which favour the other side. What is this but wilfully to mis- 
guide the understanding, and is so far from giving truth its due value, that it 
wholly debases it : espouse opinions that best comport with their power, pro- 
fit, or credit, and then seek arguments to support them 1 Truth lit upon this 
way is of no more avail to us than error ; for what is so taken up by us may 
be false as well as true, and he has not done his duty who has thus stumbled 
upon truth in his way to preferment. 

There is another, but more innocent way of collecting arguments, very 
familiar among bookish men, which is to furnish themselves with the argu- 
ments they meet with pro and con. in the questions they study. This helps 
them not to judge right, nor argue strongly, but only to talk copiously on 
either side, without being steady and settled in their own judgments : for 
such arguments, gathered from other men's thoughts, floating only in the 
memory, are there ready, indeed, to supply copious talk with some appear- 
ance of reason, but are far from helping us to judge right. Such variety of 
arguments only distract the understanding that relies on them, unleSs it has 
gone farther than such a superficial way of examining ; this is to quit truth 
for appearance, only to serve our vanity. The sure and only way to get 
true knowledge is to form in our minds clear settled notions of things, 
with names annexed to those determined ides. These we are to consider, 
with their several relations and habitudes, and not amuse ourselves with 
floating names and words of in determined signification, which we can use in 
several senses to serve a turn. It is in the perception of the habitudes and 
respects our ideas have one to another that real knowledge consists ; and 
when a man once perceives how far they agree or disagree one with another, 
he will be able to judge of what other people say, and will not need to be led 
by the arguments of others, which are many of them nothing but plausible 
sophistry. This will teach him to state the question right, and see whereon 
it turns ; and thus he will stand upon his own legs, and know by his own un- 
derstanding. Whereas by collecting and learning arguments by heart* he 
will be but a retainer to others : and when any one questions the foundations 
they are built upon, he will be at a nonplus, and be fain to give up his implicit 
knowledge. 

Sect. 16. Haste. — Labour for labours' sake is against nature. The un- 



500 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect, 16. 

derstanding, as well as all the other faculties, chooses always the shortest way 
to its end, would presently obtain the knowledge it is about, and then set. 
upon some new inquiry. But this, whether laziness or haste, often misleads 
it, and makes it content itself with improper ways of search, and such as will 
not serve the turn : sometimes it rests upon testimony, when testimony of 
right has nothing to do, because it is easier to believe than to be scientifically 
.nstructed : sometimes it contents itself with one argument, and rests satis- 
lied with that, as it were a demonstration, whereas the thing under proof 
is not capable of demonstration, and therefore must be submitted to the 
trial of probabilities, and all the material arguments pro and con. be exa- 
mined and brought to a balance. In some cases the mind is determined by 
probable topics in inquiries where demonstration may be had. All these, and 
several others which laziness, impatience, custom, and want of use and at- 
tention lead men into, are misapplications of the understanding in the search 
of truth. In every question the nature and manner of the proof it is capable 
of should be considered, to make our inquiry such as it should be. This would 
save a great deal of frequently misemployed pains, and lead us sooner to that 
discovery and possession of truth we are capable of. The multiplying variety 
of arguments, especially frivolous ones, such as are all that are merely verbal, 
is not only lost labour, but cumbers the memory to no purpose, and serves 
only to hinder it from seizing and holding of the truth in all those cases which 
are capable of demonstration. In such a way of proof the truth and certainty 
is seen, and the mind fully possesses itself of it; when in the other way of 
assent it only hovers about it, is amused with uncertainties. In this superfi- 
cial way, indeed, the mind is capable of more variety of plausible talk, but is 
not enlarged, as it should be, in its knowledge. It is to this same haste and 
impatience of the mind also, that a not due tracing of the arguments to their 
true foundation is owing ; men see a little, presume a great deal, and so jump 
to the conclusion. This is a short way to fancy and conceit, and (if firmly 
embraced) to opinionatry, but is certainly the farthest way about to know- 
ledge. For he that will know, must by the connexion of the proofs see the 
truth, and the ground it stands on ; and therefore, if he has for haste skipped 
over what he should have examined, he must begin and go over all again, or 
else he will never come to knowledge. 

Sect. 17. Desultory. — Another fault of as ill consequence as this, which 
proceeds also from laziness, with a mixture of vanity, is the skipping from 
one sort of knowledge to another. Some men's tempers are quickly weary 
of any one thing. Constancy and assiduity is what they cannot bear: the 
same study long continued in is as intolerable to them as the appearing long 
in the same clothes, or fashion, is to a court-lady. 

Sect: 18. Smattering. — Others, that they may seem universally knowing, 
get a little smattering in every thing. Both these may fill their heads with 
superficial notions of things, but are very much out of the way of attaining 
truth or knowledge. 

Sect. 19. Universality. — I do not here speak against the taking a taste 
of every sort of knowledge ; it is certainly very useful and necessary to form 
the mind ; but then it must be done in a different way, and to a different end. 
Not for talk and vanity to fill the head with shreds of all kinds, that he who 
<s possessed of such a frippery may be able to match the 'discourses of all he 
shall meet with, as if nothing could come amiss to him; and his head was so 
well stored a magazine, that nothing could be proposed which he was not 
master of, and was readily furnished to entertain any one on. This is an ex- 
cellency, indeed, and a great one too, to have a real and true knowledge in 
all, or most of the objects of contemplation. But it is what the mind of one 
and the same man can hardly attain unto ; and the instances are so few of 
those who have, in any measure, approached towards it, that I know no 
whether they are to be proposed as examples in the ordinary conduct of the 
jnderstanding. For a man to understand fully the business of his particular 
calling in the commonwealth, and of religion, which is his calling as he is a 



Sect. 19. UNIVERSALITY. 501 

man in the world, is usually enough to take up his whole time ; and there are 
few that inform themselves in these, which is every man's proper and peculiar 
business, so to the bottom as they should do. But though this be so, and 
there are very few men that extend their thoughts toward universal know- 
ledge ; yet I do not doubt, but if the right way were taken, and the methods 
of inquiry were ordered as they should be, men of little business and great 
leisure might go a great deal farther in it than is usually done. To turn to 
the business in hand ; the end and use of a little insight in those parts of 
knowledge, which are not a man's proper business, is to accustom our 
minds to all sorts of ideas, and the proper ways of examining their habitudes 
and relations. This gives the mind a freedom, and the exercising the under- 
standing in the several ways of inquiry and reasoning, which the most skill- 
ful have made use of, teaches the mind sagacity and wariness, and a supple- 
ness to apply itself more closely and dexterously to the bents and turns of the 
matter in all its researches. Besides, this universal taste of all the sciences, 
with an indifferency before the mind is possessed with any one in particular, 
and grown into love and admiration of what is made its darling, will prevent 
another evil, very commonly to be observed in those who have from the be- 
ginning been seasoned only by one part of knowledge. Let a man be given 
up to the contemplation of one sort of knowledge, and that will become every 
thing. The mind will take such a tincture from a familiarity with that object, 
that every thing else, how remote soever, will be brought under the same 
view. A metaphysician will bring ploughing and gardening immediately to 
abstract notions : the history of nature shall signify nothing to him. An al- 
chymist, on the contrary, shall reduce divinity to the maxims of his labora- 
tory ; explain morality by sal, sulphur, and mercury ; and allegorize the Scrip- 
ture itself, and the sacred mysteries thereof, into the philosopher's stone, 
And I heard once a man, who had a more than ordinary excellency in music, 
seriously accommodate Moses's seven days of the first week to the notes of 
music, as if from thence had been taken the measure and method of the crea- 
tion. It is of no small consequence to keep the mind from such a possession, 
which I think is best done by giving it a fair and equal view of the whole in- 
tellectual world, wherein it may see the order, rank, and beauty of the whole, 
and give a just allowance to the distinct provinces of the several sciences in 
the due order and usefulness of each of them. 

If this be that which old men will not think necessary, nor be easily brought 
to ; it is fit, at least, that it should be practised in the breeding of the young. 
The business of education, as I have already observed, is not, as I think, to 
make them perfect in any one of the sciences, but so to open and dispose 
their minds, as may best make them capable of any, when they shall apply 
themselves to it. If men are, for a long time, accustomed only to one sort or 
method of thoughts, their minds grow stiff in it, and do not readily turn to 
another. It is, therefore, to give them this freedom, that I think they should 
be made to look into all sorts of knowledge, and exercise their understand- 
ings in so wide a variety and stock of knowledge. But I do not propose it as 
a variety and stock of knowledge, but a variety and freedom of thinking, as 
an increase of the powers and activity of the mind, not as an enlargement of 
its possessions. 

Sect. 20. Reading. — This is that which I think great readers are apt tc 
be mistaken in. Those who have read of every thing, are thought to under- 
stand every thing too ; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind 
only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. 
We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with 
a great load of collections, unless we chew them over again, they will not give 
us strength and nourishment. There are, indeed, in some writers visible in- 
stances of deep thoughts, close and acute reasoning, and ideas well pursued. 
The light these would give would be of great use, if their reader would ob- 
serve and imitate them ; all the rest at best are but particulars fit to be turned 
into kno^edge ; but that can be done only by our own meditation, and exa 



502 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect. 20. 

minii.g the reach, force, and coherence of what is said ; and then, as far as 
we apprehend and see the connexion of ideas, so far it is ours ; without that, 
it is but so much loose matter floating in our brain. The memory may be 
etored, but the judgment is little better, and the stock of knowledge not in- 
creased, by being able to repeat what others have said, or produce the argu- 
ments we have found in them. Such a knowledge as this is but knowledge 
by hearsay, and the ostentation of it is at best but talking by rote, and very 
often upon weak and wrong principles. For all that is to be found in books is 
not built upon true foundations, nor always rightly deduced from the princi- 
ples it is pretended to be built on. Such an examen as is requisite to disco- 
ver that, every reader's mind is not forward to make ; especially in those who 
nave given themselves up to a party, and only hunt for what they can scrape 
together^ that they may favour and support the tenets of it. Such men wil- 
fully exclude themselves from truth, and from all true benefit to be received by 
reading. Others of more indifferency often want attention and industry. 
The mind is backward in itself to be at the pains to trace every argument to 
its original, and to see upon what basis it stands, and how firmly ; but yet it 
is this that gives so much the advantage to one man more than another in 
reading. The mind should by severe rules be tied down to this, at first, un- 
easy task ; use and exercise will give it facility. So that those who are ac- 
customed to it readily, as it were with one cast of the eye, take a view of the 
argument, and presently, in most cases, see where it bottoms. Those who 
have got this faculty, one may say, have got the true key of books, and the 
clue to lead them through the mizmaze of variety of opinions and authors to 
truth and certainty. This young beginners should be entered in, and showed 
the use of, that they might profit by their reading. Those who are strangers 
to it will be apt to think it too great a clog in the way of men's studies, and 
they will suspect they shall make but small progress, if, in the books they read, 
they must stand to examine and unravel every argument, and follow it step 
by step up to its original. 

I answer, this is a good objection, and ought to weigh with those whose 
reading is designed for much talk and little knowledge, and I have nothing to 
say to it. But I am here inquiring into the conduct of the understanding in 
its progress towards knowledge ; and to those who aim at that, I may say, that 
he who fair and softly goes steadily forward in a course that points right, will 
sooner be at his journey's end, than he that runs after every one he meets, 
though he gallop all day full-speed. 

To which let me add, that this way of thinking on, and profiting by, what 
we read, will be a clog and rub to any one only in the beginning : when cus- 
tom and exercise have made it familiar, it will be dispatched, on most occa- 
sions, without resting or interruption in the course of our reading. The mo- 
tions and views of a mind exercised that way are wonderfully quick ; and a 
man used to such sort of reflections sees as much at one glimpse as would re- 
quire a long discourse to lay before another, and make out in an entire and 
gradual deduction. Besides that, when the first difficulties are over, the de- 
light and sensible advantage it brings mightily encourages and enlivens the 
mind in reading, which without this is very improperly called study. 

Sect. 21. Intermediate principles. — As a help to this, I think it may be 
proposed, that for the saving the long progression of the thoughts to remote 
and first principles in every case, the mind should provide it several stages ; 
that is to say, intermediate principles, which it might have recourse to in the 
examining those positions that come in its way. These, though they are not 
self-evident principles, yet if they have been made out from them by a wary 
and unquestionable deduction, may be depended on as certain and infallible 
truths, and serve as unquestionable truths to prove other points depending on 
them by a nearer and shorter view than remote and general maxims. These 
may serve as land-marks to show what lies in the direct way of truth, or is 
quite besides it. And thus mathematicians do, who do not in every new pro 
blem run it back to the first axioms, through all the whole train of interme • 



Sect. 21. INTERMEDIATE PRINCIPLES. 503 

diate propositions. Certain theorems, that they have settled to themselves 
upon sure demonstration, serve to resolve to them multitudes of propositions 
which depend on them, and are as firmly made out from thence as if the mind 
went afresh over every link of the whole chain that ties them to first self-evi- 
dent principles. Only in other sciences great care is to be taken, that they 
establish those intermediate principles with as much caution, exactness and 
mdhTerency, as mathematicians use in the settling any of their great theorems. 
When this" is not done, but men take up the principles in this or that science 
upon credit, inclination, interest, &c. in haste, without due examination, and 
most unquestionable proof, they lay a trap for themselves, and, as much as in 
them lies, captivate their understandings to mistake, falsehood and error. 

Sect. 22. Partiality. — As there is a partiality to opinions, which, as we 
have already observed, is apt to mislead the understanding ; so there is often 
a partiality to studies, which is prejudicial also to knowledge and improve- 
ment. Those sciences which men are particularly versed in they are apt to 
value and extol, as if that part of knowledge which every one has acquainted 
himself with were that alone which was worth the having, and all the rest 
were idle and empty amusements, comparatively of no use or importance. 
This is the effect of ignorance, and not knowledge ; the being vainly puffed 
up with a flatulency arising from a weak and narrow comprehension. It is 
not amiss that every one should relish the science that he has made his pecu- 
liar study ; a view of its beauties, and a sense of its usefulness, carries a man 
on with the more delight and warmth in the pursuit and improvement of it. 
But the contempt of all other knowlege, as if it were nothing in comparison 
of law or physic, of astronomy or chemistry, or perhaps some yet meaner 
part of knowledge, wherein I have got some smattering, or am somewhat ad- 
vanced, is not only the mark of a vain or little mind ; but does this prejudice 
in the conduct of the understanding, that it coops it up within narrow bounds, 
and hinders it from looking abroad into other provinces of the intellectual 
world, more beautiful possibly and more fruitful than that which it had, till 
then, laboured in; wherein it might find, besides new knowledge/ ways or 
hints whereby it might be enabled the better to cultivate its own. 

Sect. 23. Theology. — There is, indeed, one science (as they are now 
distinguished) incomparably above all the rest, where it is not by corruption 
larrowed into a trade or faction, for mean or ill ends, and secular interests ; 
i mean theology, which, containing the knowledge of God and his creatures, 
our duty to him and our fellow- creatures, and a view of our present and future 
state, is the comprehension of all other knowledge directed to its true end ; 
i. e. the honour and veneration of the Creator, and the happiness of man- 
kind. This is that noble study which is every man's duty, and every one that 
can be called a rational creature is capable of. The works of nature, and the 
words of revelation, display it to mankind in characters so large and visible, 
that those who are not quite blind may in them read and see the first princi- 
ples and most necessary parts of it ; and from thence, as they have time and 
industry, may be enabled to go on to the more abstruse parts of it, and pene- 
trate into those infinite depths filled with the treasures of wisdom and know- 
ledge. This is that science which would truly enlarge men's minds, were it 
studied, or permitted to be studied, every where, with that freedom, love of 
truth, and charity which it teaches, and were not made, contrary to its nature, 
the occasion of strife, faction, malignity, and narrow impositions. I shall say 
no more here of this, but that it is undoubtedly a wrong use of my under- 
standing, to make it the rule and measure of another man's ; a use which it 
is neither fit for, nor capable of. 

Sect. 24. Partiality. — This partiality, where it is not permitted an au- 
thority to render all other studies insignificant or contemptible, is often in- 
dulged so far as to be relied upon, and made use of in other parts of know- 
ledge, to which it does not at all belong, and wherewith it has no manner of 
affinity. Some men have so used their heads to mathematical figures, that, 
giving a preference to the methods of that science, they introduce lines and 



504 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 

diagrams into their study of divinity, or politic inquiries, as if nothing could 
be known without them ; and others, accustomed to retired speculations, run 
natural philosophy into metaphysical notions, and the abstract generalities of 
logic ; and how often may one meet with religion and morality treated of in 
the terms of the laboratory, and thought to be improved by the methods and 
notions of chemistry 1 But he that will take care of the conduct of his un- 
derstanding, to direct it right to the knowledge of things, must avoid those 
undue mixtures, and not, by a fondness for what he has found useful and ne- 
cessary in one, transfer it to another science, where it serves only to perplex 
and confound the understanding. It is a certain truth, that res nolunt male 
administrari ; it is no less certain res nolunt male intelligi. Things them- 
selves are to be considered as they are in themselves, and then they will show 
us in what way they are to be understood. For to have right conceptions 
about them, we must bring our understandings to the inflexible natures and 
unalterable relations of things, and not endeavour to bring things to any pre 
conceived notions of our own. 

There is another partiality very commonly observable in men of study, no 
less prejudicial nor ridiculous than the former; and that is a fantastical and 
wild attributing all knowledge to the ancients alone, or to the moderns. This 
raving upon antiquity in matter of poetry, Horace has wittily described and 
exposed in one of his satires. The same sort of madness may be found in 
reference to all the other sciences. Some will not admit an opinion not au- 
thorized by men of old, who were then all giants in knowledge. Nothing is 
to be put into the treasury of truth or knowledge which has not the stamp of 
Greece or Rome upon it; and since their days, will scarce allow that men have 
been able to see, think, or write. Others, with a like extravagancy, contemn 
all that the ancients have left us, and, being taken with the modern inventions 
and discoveries, lay by all that went before, as if whatever is called old must 
have the decay of time upon it, and truth, too, were liable to mould and rot- 
tenness. ^Men, 1 think, have been much the same for natural endowments in 
all times. Fashion, discipline, and education, have put eminent differences 
in the ages of several countries, and made one generation much differ from 
another in arts and sciences : but truth is always the same ; time alters it not, 
nor is it the better or worse for being of ancient or modern tradition.) Many 
were eminent in former ages of the world for their discovery and delivery of 
it ; but though the knowledge tbey have left us be worth our study, yet 
they exhausted not all its treasure ; they left a great deal for the industry and 
sagacity of after-ages, and so shall we. That was once new to them which 
any one now receives with veneration for its antiquity, nor was it the worse 
for appearing as a novelty ; and that which is now embraced for its newness 
will to posterity be old, but not thereby be less true or less genuine. There is 
no occasion, on this account, to oppose the ancients and the moderns to one 
another, or to be squeamish on either side. He that wisely conducts his mind 
in the pursuit of knowledge will gather what lights, and get what helps he 
can, from either of them, from whom they are best to be had, without adoring 
the errors, or rejecting the truths, which he may find mingled in them. 

Another partiality may be observed, in some to vulgar, in others to hetero- 
dox tenets : some are apt to conclude that what is the common opinion cannot 
but be true ; so many men's eyes they think cannot but see right ; so many 
men's understandings of all sorts cannot be deceived ; and, therefore, will not 
venture to look beyond the received notions of the place and age, nor have so 
presumptuous a thought as to be wiser than their neighbours. They are con- 
tent to go with the crowd, and so go easily, which they think is going right, 
di* at least serves them as well. But, however vox populi vox Dei has pre- 
vailed as a maxim, yet I do not remember where ever God delivered his ora- 
cles by the multitude, or nature truths by the herd. On the other side, some 
fly all common opinions as either false or frivolous. The title of many-headed 
beast is a sufficient reason for them to conclude that no truths of weight or 
consequence can be lodged there. Vulgar opinions are suited to vulgar eapa. 



PARTIALITY. 505 

cities, and adapted to the ends of those that govern. He that will know the 
truth of tilings must leave the common and beaten track, which none but weak 
and servile minds are satisfied to trudge along continually in. Such nice pa- 
lates relish nothing but strange notions quite out of the way : whatever i3 
commonly received, has the mark of the beast on it ; and they think it a les- 
sening to them to hearken to it, or receive it ; their mind runs only after para- 
doxes ; these they seek, these they embrace, these alone they vent ; and so, as 
they think, distinguish themselves from the vulgar. But common or uncom- 
mon are not the marks to distinguish truth or falsehood, and therefore should 
not be any bias to us in our inquiries. We should not judge of things by 
men's opinions, but of opinions by things. The multitude reason but ill, and 
therefore may be well suspected, and cannot be relied on, nor should be fol- 
lowed as a sure guide ; but philosophers, who have quitted the orthodoxy of 
the community, and the popular doctrines of their countries, have fallen into 
as extravagant and as absurd opinions as ever common reception countenanced. 
It would be madness to refuse to breathe the common air, or quench one's 
thirst with water, because the rabble use them to these purposes : and if there 
are conveniences of life which common use reaches not, it is not reason to 
reject them because they are not grown into the ordinary fashion of the coun- 
try, and every villager doth not know them. Truth, whether in or out of 
fashion, is the measure of knowledge, and the business of the understanding; 
whatsoever is besides that, however authorized by consent, or recommended 
by rarity, is nothing but ignorance, or something worse. 

Another sort of partiality there is, whereby men impose upon themselves, 
and by it make their reading little useful to themselves : I mean the making 
use of the opinions of writers, and laying stress upon their authorities, wher- 
ever they find them to favour their own opinions. 

There is nothing almost has done more harm to men dedicated to letters 
than giving the name of study to reading, and making a man of great read- 
ing to be the same with a man of great knowledge, or at least to be a title of 
honour. All that can be recorded in writing are only facts or reasonings. 

Facts are of three sorts; 1. Merely of natural agents, observable in the 
ordinary operations of bodies one upon another, whether in the visible course 
of things left to themselves, or in experiments made by them, applying agents 
and patients to one another, after a peculiar and artificial manner. 2. Of 
voluntary agents, more especially the actions of men in society, which makes 
civil and moral history. 3. Of opinions. 

In these three consists, as it seems to me, that which commonly has the 
name of learning ; to which perhaps some may add a distinct head of critical 
writings, which indeed at bottom is nothing but matter of fact ; and resolves 
itself into this, that such a man, or set of men, used such a word, or phrase, 
m such a sense ; i. e. that they made such sounds the marks of such ideas. 

Under reasonings I comprehend all the discoveries of general truths made 
by human reason, whether found by intuition, demonstration, or probable de- 
ductions. And this is that which is, if not alone knowledge, (because the truth 
or probability of particular propositions may be known too,) yet is, as may 
be supposed, most properly the business of those who pretend to improve 
their understandings, and make themselves knowing by reading. 

Books and reading are looked upon to be the great helps of the understand- 
ing, and instruments of knowledge, as it must be allowed that they are ; and 
yet I beg leave to question whether these do not prove a hinderance to many, 
and keep several bookish men from attaining to solid and true knowledge. 
This, I think, I may be permitted to say, that there is no part wherein the un- 
derstanding needs a more careful and wary conduct than in the use of books ; 
without which they will prove rather innocent amusements than profitable em- 
ployments of our time, and bring but small additions to our knowledge. 

There is not seldom to be found, even among those who aim at knowledge, 
who with an unwearied industry employ their whole time in books, who scarce 
allow themselves time to eat or sleep, but read, and read, and read on, ye, 
30 



506 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect. 24 

make no great advances in real knowledge, though there be no defect in their 
intellectual faculties, to which their little progress can be imputed. The mis- 
take here is, that it is usually supposed that by reading, the author's know- 
ledge is transfused into the reader's understanding ; and so it is, but not by 
bare reading, but by reading and understanding what he writ. Whereby [ 
mean, not barely comprehending what is affirmed or denied in each proposi- 
tion, (though that great readers do not always think themselves concerned 
precisely to do,) but to see and follow the train of his reasonings, observe the 
strength and clearness of their connexion, and examine upon what they bottom. 
Without this a man may read the discourses of a very rational author, writ 
in a language, and in propositions, that he very well understands, and yet ac- 
quire not one jot of his knowledge ; which consisting only in the perceived, 
certain, or probable connexion of the ideas made use of in his reasonings, 
the reader's knowledge is no farther increased than he perceives that ; so much 
as he sees of this connexion, so much he knows of the truth or probability 
of that author's opinions. 

All that he relies on, without this perception, he takes upon trust, upon the 
author's credit, without any knowledge of it at all. This makes me not at 
all wonder to see some men so abound in citations, and build so much upon 
authorities, it being the sole foundation on which they bottom most of their 
own tenets ; so that, in effect, they have but a second-hand, or implicit know- 
ledge ; i. e. are in the right, if such an one from whom they borrowed it were 
in the right in that opinion which they took from him ; which indeed is no 
knowledge at all. Writers of this or former ages may be good witnesses of 
matters of fact which they deliver, which we may do well to take upon their 
authority ; but their credit can go no farther than this ; it cannot at all affect 
the truth and falsehood of opinions which have no other sort of trial but rea- 
son and proof, which they themselves made use of to make themselves know- 
ing, and so must others too, that will partake in their knowledge. Indeed, it 
s an advantage that they have been at the pains to find out the proofs, and lay 
:hem in that order that may show the truth or probability of their conclusions ; 
in 1 for this we owe them great acknowledgments for saving us the pains in 
searching out those proofs which they have collected for us, and which possi- 
bly, after a!l our pains, we might not have found, nor been able to have set 
them in so good a light as that which they left them us in. Upon this ac- 
count we are mightily beholden to judicious writers of all ages, for those dis- 
coveries and discourses they have left behind them for our instruction, if we 
know how to make a right use of them ; which is not to run them over in a 
hasty perusal, and perhaps lodge their opinions or some remarkable passages 
in our memories ; but to enter into their reasonings, examine their proofs, and 
then judge of the truth or falsehood, probability or improbability of what they 
advance, not by any opinion v r e have entertained of the author, but by the 
evidence he pfs^uces, and the conviction he affords us, drawn from things 
themselves. Knowing is seeing, and if it be so, it is madness to persuade 
ourselves that we do so by another man's eyes, let him use ever so many words 
to tell us that what he asserts is very visible. Till we ourselves see it with 
our own eyes, and perceive it by our own understandings, we are as much in 
the dark and as void of knowledge as before, let us believe any learned author 
as much as we will. 

Euclid and Archimedes are allowed to be knowing, and to have demon- 
strated what they say : and yet whoever shall read over their writings with- 
out perceiving the connexion of their proofs, and seeing what they show, 
though he may understand all their words, yet he is not the more knowing : 
he may believe, indeed, but does not know what they say ; and so is not ad- 
vanced one jot in mathematical knowledge, by all his reading of those ap- 
proved mathematicians. 

Sect. 25. Haste. — The eagerness and strong bent of the mind after know- 
ledge, if not warily regulated, is often an hinderance to it. It still presses 
into farther discoveries and new objects, and catches at the variety of know- 



Sect. 25. HASTE. 507 

ledge ; and therefore often stays not long enough on what is before it, to look 
into it as it should, for haste to pursue what is yet out of sight. He that rides 
post through a country may be able, from the transient view, to tell how in 
general the parts lie, and may be able to give some loose description of here 
a mountain, and there a plain ; here a morass, and there a river ; woodland in 
one part, and savannahs in another. Such superficial ideas and observations 
as these he may collect in galloping over it : but the more useful observations 
of the soil, plants, animals, and inhabitants, with their several sorts and pro- 
perties, must necessarily escape him ; and it is seldom men ever discover the 
rich mines without some digging. Nature commonly lodges her treasure and 
jewels in rocky ground. If the matter be knotty, and the sense lies deep, the 
mind must stop and buckle to it, and stick upon it with labour and thought, 
and close contemplation ; and not leave it till it has mastered the difficulty, 
and got possession of truth. But here care must be taken to avoid the other 
extreme : a man must not stick at every useless nicety, and expect mysteries 
of science m every trivial question, or scruple, that he may raise. He that 
will stand to pick up and examine every pebble that comes in his way is as 
unlikely to return enriched and loaden with jewels, as the other that travelled 
full speed. Truths are not the better nor the worse for their obviousness or 
difficulty, but their value is to be measured by their usefulness and tendency. 
Insignificant observations should not take up any of our minutes, and those 
that enlarge our view, and give light towards farther and useful discoveries, 
should not be neglected, though they stop our course and spend some of our 
time in a fixed attention. 

There is another haste that does often, and will mislead the mind if it be 
left to itself, and its own conduct. The understanding is naturally forward, 
not only to learn its knowledge by variety (which makes it skip over one to 
get speedily to another part of knowledge) but also eager to enlarge its views, 
by running too fast into general observations and conclusions, without a due 
examination of particulars enough whereon to found those general axioms. 
This seems to enlarge their stock, but it is of fancies, not realities ; such 
theories built upon narrow foundations stand but weakly, and, if they fall not 
of themselves, are at least very hardly to be supported against the assaults of 
opposition. And thus men being too hasty to erect to themselves general 
notions and ill-grounded theories, find themselves deceived in their stock of 
knowledge, when they come to examine their hastily assumed maxims them- 
selves, or to have them attacked by others. General observations drawn from 
particulars are the jewels of knowledge, comprehending great store in a little 
room ; but they are therefore to be made with the greater care and caution, 
lest, if we take counterfeit for true, our loss and shame be the greater when 
our stock comes to a severe scrutiny. One or two particulars may suggest 
hints of inquiry, and they do well to take those hints ; but if they turn them 
into conclusions, and make them presently general rules, they are forward 
indeed, but it is only to impose on themselves by propositions assumed for 
truths without sufficient warrant. To make such observations is, as has been 
already remarked, to make the head a magazine of materials, which can hardly 
be called knowledge ; or at least it is but like a collection of lumber not re- 
duced to use or order ; and he that makes every thing an observation, has the 
same useless plenty, and much more falsehood mixed with it. The extremes 
on both sides are to be avoided, and he will be able to give the best account 
of his studies who keeps his understanding in the right mean between them. 

Sect. 26. Anticipation. — Whether it be a love of that which brings the 
first light and information to their minds, and want of vigour and industry to 
inquire ; or else that men content themselves with any appearance of know- 
ledge, right or wrong ; which, when they have once got, they will hold fast : 
this is visible, that many men give themselves up to the first anticipations of 
their minds, and are very tenacious of the opinions that first possess them ; 
they are often as fond of their first conceptions as of their first-born, and will 
by no means recede from the judgment they have once made, or any conjee 



008 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect. 26, 

ture or conceit which they have once entertained. This is a fault in the con 
duct of the understanding, since this firmness or rather stiffness of the mind 
is not from an adherence to truth, but a submission to prejudice. It is an 
unreasonable homage paid to prepossession, whereby we show a reverence, 
not to (what we pretend to seek) truth, but what by hap-hazard we chance 
to light on, be it what it will. This is visibly a preposterous use of our facul- 
ties, and is a downright prostituting of the mind to resign it thus, and put it 
under the power of the first comer. This can never be allowed, or ought to 
De followed, as a right way to knowledge, till the understanding (whose 
business it is to conform itself to what it finds in the objects without) can, by 
its own opinionatry, change that, and make the unalterable nature of things 
comply with its own hasty determinations, which will never be. Whatever 
we fancy, things keep their course; and the habitudes, correspondencies, and 
relations, keep the same to one another. 

Sect. 27. Resignation. — Contrary to these, but by a like dangerous ex- 
cess, on the other side, are those who always resign their judgment to the 
last man they heard or read. Truth never sinks into these men's minds, nor 
gives anv tincture to them ; but* cameleon-like, they take the colour of what 
is laid before them, and as soon lose and resign it to the next that happens to 
come in their way. The order wherein opinions are proposed, or received by 
us, is no rule of their rectitude, nor ought to be a cause of their preference. 
First or List, in this case, is the effect of chance, and not the measure of truth 
or falsehood. This every one must confess, and therefore should in the pur- 
suit of truth, keep his mind free from the influence of any such accidents. A 
man may as reasonably draw cuts for his tenets, regulate his persuasion by 
the cast of a die, as take it up for its novelty, or retain it because it had his 
first assent, and he was never of another mind. Well-weighed reasons are 
to determine the judgment ; those the mind should be always ready to hearken 
and submit to, and by their testimony and suffrage entertain or reject any 
tenet indifferently, whether it be a perfect stranger, or an old acquaintance. 

Sect. 28. Practice. — Though the faculties of the mind are improved by 
exercise, yet they must not be put to a stress beyond their strength. Quid 
valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent, must be made the measure of every 
one's understanding, who has a desire not only to perform well, but to keep 
up the vigour of his faculties ; and not to baulk his understanding by what is 
too hard for it. The mind, by being engaged in a task beyond its strength, 
like the body, strained by lifting at a weight too heavy, has often its force 
broken, and thereby gets an unaptness, or an aversion, to any vigorous attempt 
ever after. A sinew cracked seldom recovers its former strength, or at least 
the tenderness of the sprain remains a good while after, and the memory of 
it longer, and leaves a lasting caution in the man, not to put the part quickly 
again to any robust employment. So it fares in the mind once jaded by an 
attempt above its power; it either is disabled for the future, or else checks at 
any vigorous undertaking ever after ; at least is very hardly brought to exert 
its force again on any subject that requires thought and meditation. 'The 
understanding should be brought to the difficult and knotty parts of know- 
ledge, that try the strength of thought, and a full bent of the mind, by insen- 
sible degrees ; and in such a gradual proceeding nothing is too hard for it J 
Nor let it be objected, that such a slow progress will never reach the extent 
of some sciences. It is not to be imagined how far constancy will carry a 
man ; however, it is better walking slowly in a rugged way, than to break a 
leg and be a cripple. He that begins with the calf may carry the ox ; but he 
that will at first go to take up an ox, may so disable himself as not to be able 
to lift up a calf after that. When the mind, by insensible degrees, has brought 
itself to attention and close thinking, it will be able to cope with difficulties, 
and master them without any prejudice to itself, and then it may go on 
roundly. Every abstruse problem, every intricate question, will not baffle, 
discourage, or break it. But though putting the mind unprepared upon an 
unusual stress, that may discourage or damp it for the future, ought to be 



Sect. 28. PRACTICE. 509 

avoided; yet this must not run it by an over-great shyness of difficulties, into 
a lazy sauntering about ordinary and obvious things, that demand no thought 
or application. This debases and enervates the understanding, makes it weak 
and unfit for labour. This is a sort of hovering about the surface of things, 
without any insight into them or penetration ; and when the mind has been 
once habituated to this lazy recumbency and satisfaction on the obvious sur- 
face of things, it is in danger to rest satisfied there, and go no deeper; since 
it cannot do it without pains and digging. He that has for some time accus- 
tomed himself to take up with what easily offers itself at first view, has reason 
to fear he shall never reconcile himself to the fatigue of turning and tumbling 
things in his mind, to discover their more retired and more valuable secrets. 

Tt is not strange that methods of learning which scholars have been accus- 
tomed to in their beginning and entrance upon the sciences, should influence 
them all their lives, and be settled in their minds by an overruling reverence ; 
especially if they be such as universal use has established. Learners must at 
first be believers, and their masters' rules having been once made axioms to 
them, it is no wonder they should keep that dignity, and, by the authority 
they have once got, mislead those who think it sufficient to excuse them, if 
they go out of their way in a well-beaten track. 

Sect. 29. Words. — I have copiously enough spoken of the abuse of words 
in another place, and therefore shall upon this reflection, that the sciences 
are full of them, warn those that would conduct their understandings right 
not to take any term, howsoever authorized by the language of the schools, to 
stand for any thing till they have an idea of it. A word may be of frequent 
use, and great credit, with several authors, and be by them made use of as if 
it stood for some real being; but yet, if he that reads cannot frame any dis- 
tinct idea of that being, it is certainly to him a mere empty sound without a 
meaning; and he learns no more by all that is said of it, or attributed to it, 
than if it were affirmed only of that bare empty sound. (They who would 
advance in knowledge, and not deceive and swell themselves with a little 
articulated air, should lay down this as a fundamental rule, not to take words 
for things, nor suppose that names in books signify real entities in nature, till 
they can frame clear and distinct ideas of those entities.s) It will not perhaps 
be allowed, if I should set down " substantial forms" and " intentional spe- 
cies," as such that may justly be suspected to be of this kind of insignificant 
terms : but this I am sure, to one that can form no determined ideas of what 
they stand for, they signify nothing at all ; and all that he thinks he knows 
about them is to him so much knowledge about nothing, and amounts at most 
but to be a learned ignorance. It is not without all reason supposed that 
there are many such empty terms to be found in some learned writers, to 
which they had recourse to etch out their systems, where their understand- 
ings could not furnish them with conceptions from things. But yet I believe 
the supposing of some realities in nature, answering those and the like words, 
have much perplexed some, and quite misled others in the study of nature. 
That which in any discourse signifies, " I know not what," should be consi- 
dered " I know not when." Where men have any conceptions, they can, if 
they are never so abstruse or abstracted, explain them, and the terms they 
use for them. For our conceptions being nothing but ideas, which are all 
made up of simple ones : if they cannot give us the ideas their words stand 
for, it is plain they have none. To what purpose can it be to hunt after his 
conceptions who has none, or none distinct 1 He that knew not what he 
himself meant by a learned term, cannot make us know any thing by his use 
of it, let us beat our heads about it never so long. Whether we are able to 
comprehend all the operations of nature, and the manners of them, it matters 
aot to inquire ; but this is certain, that we can comprehend no more of them 
ihan we can distinctly conceive ; and therefore to obtrude terms where we 
have no distinct conceptions, as if they did contain or rather conceal some- 
thing, is but an artifice of learned vanity to cover a defect in a hypothesis or 
our understandings. Words are not made to conceal, but to declare and 



510 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect.2i>. 

vhow something ; where they are by those, who pretend to instruct, otherwise 
used, they conceal indeed something; but that that they conceal is nothing 
but the ignorance, error, or sophistry of the talker; for there is, in truth, 
nothing else under them. 

Sect. 30. Wandering. — That there is a constant succession and flux of 
ideas in our minds, I have observed in the former part of this Essay ; and 
every one may take notice of it in himself. This, I suppose, may deserve 
some part of our care in the conduct of our understandings ; and I think it 
may be of great advantage, if we can by use get that power over our minds, 
as to be able to direct that train of ideas, that so, since there will new ones 
perpetually come into our thoughts by a constant succession, we may be able 
by choice so to direct them, that none may come in view but such as are per- 
tinent to our present inquiry, and in such order as may be most useful to the 
discovery we are upon; or at least, if some foreign and unsought ideas will 
oifer themselves, that yet we might be able to reject them, and keep them 
from taking off our minds from its present pursuit, and hinder them from 
running away with our thoughts quite from the subject in hand. This is not, 
I suspect, so easy to be done as perhaps may be imagined ; and yet, for aught 
I know, this may be, if not the chief, yet one of the great differences that 
carry some men in their reasoning so far beyond others, where they seem to 
be naturally of equal parts. A proper and effectual remedy for this wandering 
of thoughts I would be glad to find. He that shall propose such an one, would 
do great service to the studious and contemplative part of mankind, and per- 
haps help unthinking men to become thinking. I must acknowledge that 
hitherto I have discovered no other way to keep our thoughts close to their 
business, but the endeavouring as much as we can, and by frequent attention 
and application, getting the habit of attention and application. He that will 
observe children will find, that even when they endeavour their utmost, they 
cannot keep their minds from straggling. The way to cure it, I am satisfied, 
is not angry chiding or beating, for that presently fills their heads with all the 
ideas that fear, dread, or confusion can offer to them. To bring back gently 
their wandering thoughts, by leading them into the path, and going before 
them in the train they should pursue, without any rebuke, or so much as 
taking notice (where it can be avoided) of their roving, I suppose would 
sooner reconcile and inure them to attention than all those rougher methods 
which more distract their thought, and, hindering the application they would 
promote, introduce a contrary habit. 

Sect. 31. Distinction. — Distinction and division are (if I mistake not the 
import of the words) very different things ; the one being the perception of a 
difference that nature has placed in things ; the other, our making a division 
where there is yet none ; at least, if I may be permitted to consider them in 
this sense, I think I may say of them that one of them is the most necessary 
and conducive to true knowledge that can be ; the other, when too much 
made use of, serves only to puzzle and confound the understanding. To ob- 
serve every the least difference that is in things argues a quick and clear 
sight; and this keeps the understanding steady, and right in its way to know- 
ledge. But though it be useful to discern every variety that is to be found in 
nature, yet it is not convenient to consider every difference that is in things, 
and divide them into distinct classes under every such difference. This will 
run us, if followed, into particulars (for every individual has something that 
differences it from another,) and we shall be able to establish no general 
truths, or else at least shall be apt to perplex the mind about them. The 
collection of several things into several classes gives the mind more general 
and larger views ; but we must take care to unite them only in that, and so 
far as they do agree, for so far they may be united under the consideration : 
for entity itself, thai comprehends all things, as general as it is, may afford 
us clear and national conceptions. If we would weigh and keep in our minds 
what it is wl are considering, that would best instruct us when we should or 
should not branch into farther distinctions, which are to be taken only from 



Sect. 31. DISTINCTION. 511 

a due contemplation of things ; to which there is nothing- more opposite than 
the art of verbal distinctions, made at pleasure in learned and arbitrarily in- 
vented terms, to be applied at ,a venture, without comprehending or convey- 
ing any distinct notions ; and so altogether fitted to artificial talk, or empty 
noise in dispute, without any clearing of difficulties, or advance in knowledge. 
Whatsoever subject we examine and would get knowledge in, we should, I 
think, make as general and as large as it will bear; nor can there be any 
danger of this, if the idea of it be settled and determined : for if that be so, 
we shall easily distinguish it from any other idea, though comprehended under 
the same name. For it is to fence against the entanglements of equivocal 
words, and the great art of sophistry which lies in them, that distinctions 
have 'been multiplied, and their use thought so necessary. But had every 
distinct abstract idea a distinct known name, there would be little need of 
these multiplied scholastic distinctions, though there would be nevertheless 
as much need still of the mind's observing the differences that are in things, 
and discriminating them thereby one from another. It is not, therefore, the 
right way to knowledge, to hunt after and fill the head with abundance of 
artificial and scholastic distinctions, wherewith learned men's writings are 
often filled : we sometimes find what they treat of so divided and subdivided, 
that the mind of the most attentive reader loses the sight of it, as it is more 
than probable the writer himself did ; for in things crumbled into dust it is in 
vain to affect or pretend order, or expect clearness. To avoid confusion, by 
too few or too many divisions, is a great skill in thinking as well as writing, 
which is but the copying our thoughts ; but what are the boundaries of the 
mean between the two vicious excesses on both hands, I think is hard to set 
down in words : clear and distinct ideas is all that I yet know able to regulate 
it. But as to verbal distinctions received and applied to common terms, i. e. 
equivocal words, they are more properly, I think, the business of criticisms 
and dictionaries than of real knowledge and philosophy; since they, for the 
most part, explain the meaning of words, and give us their several significa- 
tions. The dexterous management of terms, and being able to fend and prove 
with them, I know has and does pass in the world for a great part of learning; 
but it is learning distinct from knowledge ; for knowledge consists only in 
perceiving the habitudes and relations of ideas one to another, which is done 
without words ; the intervention of a sound helps nothing to it. And hence 
we see that there is at least use of distinctions where there is most knowledge ; 
I mean in mathematics, where men have determined ideas, without known 
tames to them ; and so there being no room for equivocations, there is no 
?eed of distinctions. In arguing, the opponent uses as comprehensive and 
equivocal terms as he can, to involve his adversary in the doubtfulness of his 
.ixpreseions: this is expected, and therefore the answerer on his side makes 
.t his plaj to distinguish as much as he can, and thinks he can never do it 
,00 much , nor can he indeed in that way wherein victory may be had without 
truth and without knowledge. This seems to me to be the art of disputing. 
Use your words as captiously as you can in your arguing on one side, and 
apply distinctions as much as you can on the other side to every term, to 
nonplus your opponent ; so that in this sort of scholarship, there being no 
bounds set to distinguishing, some men have thought all acuteness to have 
lain in it; and therefore in all they have read or thought on, their great busi- 
ness has been to amuse themseives with distinctions, and multiply to them- 
selves divisions ; at least, more than the nature of the thing required. There 
seems to me, as I said, to be no other rule for this, but a due and right con- 
sideration of things as they are in themselves. He that has settled in his 
mind determined ideas, with names affixed to them, will be able both to dis- 
cern their differences one from another, which is really distinguishing; and, 
where the penury of words affords not terras answering every distinct idea, 
ivill be able to apply proper distinguishing terms to the comprehensive and 
equivocal names he is forced to make use of. This is all the need I know ot 
distinguishing terms ; and in such verbal distinctions, each term of the dis- 



515 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect. 31. 

tinction, joined to that whose signification it distinguishes, is but a distinct 
name for a distinct idea. Where they are so, and men have clear and dis- 
tinct conceptions that answer their verbal distinctions, they are right, and are 
pertinent as far as they serve to clear any thing in the subject under consi- 
deration. And this is that which seems to me the proper and only measure 
cf distinctions and divisions ; which* he that will conduct his understanding 
right must not look for in the acuteness of invention, nor the authority of 
writers, but will find only in the consideration of things themselves, whether 
he is led into it by his own meditations, or the information of books. 

An aptness to jumble things together, wherein can be found any likeness, 
is a fault in the understanding on the other side, which will not fail to mislead 
it, and by thus lumping of things hinder the mind from distinct and accurate 
conceptions of them. 

Sect. 32. Similes. — To which let me here add another near of kin to this, 
at least in name, and that is letting the mind, upon the suggestion of any new 
notion, run immediately after similes to make it the clearer to itself, which, 
though it may be a good way, and useful in the explaining our thoughts to 
others ; yet it is by no means a right method to settle true notions of any 
thing in ourselves, because similes always fail in some part, and come short 
of that exactness which our conceptions should have to things, if we would 
think aright. This indeed makes men plausible talkers; for those are 
always most acceptable in discourse who have the way to let their thoughts 
into other men's minds with the greatest ease and facility ; whether those 
thoughts are well formed and correspond with things, matters not ; few men 
care to be instructed but at an easy rate. They, who in their discourse strike 
the fancy, and take the hearers' conceptions along with them as fast as their 
words flow, are the applauded talkers, and go for the only men of clear 
thoughts. Nothing contributes so much to this as similes, whereby men 
think they themselves understand better, because they are the better under- 
stood. But it is one thing to think right, and another thing to know the right 
way to lay our thoughts before others with advantage and clearness, be they 
right or wrong. Well-chosen similes, metaphors, and allegories, with method 
and order, do this the best of any thing, because being taken from objects 
already known, and familiar to the understanding, they are conceived as fast 
as spoken ; and the correspondence being concluded, the thing they are 
brought to explain and elucidate is thought to be understood too. Thus fancy 
passes for knowledge, and what is prettily said is mistaken for solid. I say 
not this to decry metaphor, or with design to take away that ornament of 
speech ; my business here is not with rhetoricians and orators, but with phi- 
losophers and lovers of truth ; to whom I would beg leave to give this one 
rule whereby to try whether, in the application of their thoughts to anything 
for the improvement of their knowledge, they do in truth comprehend the 
matter before them really such as it is in itself. The way to discover this is 
to observe whether, in the laying it before themselves or others, they make 
use only of borrowed representations, and ideas foreign to the things which 
are applied to it by way of accommodation, as bearing some proportion or 
imagined likeness to the subject under consideration. Figured and meta- 
phorical expressions do well to illustrate more abstruse and unfamiliar ideas 
which the mind is not yet thoroughly accustomed to ; but then they must be 
made use of to illustrate ideas that we already have, not to paint to us those 
which we yet have not. Such borrowed and allusive ideas may follow real 
and solid truth, to set it off when found: but must by no means be set in its 
place, and taken for it. If all our search has yet reached no farther than 
simile and metaphor, we may assure ourselves we ra.ther fancy than know, 
and have not yet penetrated into the inside and reality of the thing, be it what 
it will, but content ourselves with what our imaginations, not things them- 
selves, furnish us with. 

Sect. 33. Assent. — In the whole conduct of the understanding there is 
nothing of more moment than to know when and where, and how far to give 



Sect. 32. SIMILES. 513 

assent ; and possibly there is nothing- harder. It is very easily said, and no- 
body questions it, that giving and withholding our assent, and the degrees of 
it, should be regulated by the evidence which things carry with them ; and 
yet we see men are not the better for this rule ; some firmly embrace doctrines 
upon slight grounds, some upon no grounds, and some contrary to appearance : 
some admit of certainty, and are not to be moved in what they hold : others 
waver in every thing, and there want not those that reject all as uncertain 
What then shall a novice, an inquirer, a stranger do in the case ! I answer, 
use his eyes. There is a correspondence in things, and agreement and dis- 
agreement in ideas, discernible in very diiferent degrees, and there are eyes 
in men to see them, if they please : only their eyes may be dimmed or dazzled, 
and the discerning sight in them impaired or lost. Interest and passion 
dazzle; the custom of arguing on any side, even against our persuasions, dims 
the understanding, and makes it by degrees lose the faculty of discerning 
clearly between truth and falsehood, and so of adhering to the right side. It 
is not safe to play with error, and dress it up to ourselves or others in the 
shape of truth. The mind by degrees loses its natural relish of real solid 
truth, is reconciled insensibly to any thing that can be dressed up into any 
faint appearance of it; and if the fancy be allowed the place of judgment at 
first in sport, it afterward comes by use to usurp it ; and what is recommended 
by this flatterer (that studies but to please,) is received for good. There are 
so many ways of fallacy, such arts of giving colours, appearances, and resem- 
blances by this court-dresser, the fancy, that he who is not wary to admit 
nothing but truth itself, very careful not to make his mind subservient to any 
thing else, cannot but be caught. He that has a mind to believe, has half 
assented already ; and he that, by often arguing against his own sense, im- 
poses falsehood on others, is not far from believing himself. This takes away 
the great distance there is betwixt truth and falsehood ; it brings them almost 
together, and makes it no great odds, in things that approach so near, which 
you take ; and when things are brought to that pass, passion or interest, &c. 
easily and without being perceived, determine which shall be the right. 

Sect. 34. Indifferency. — I have said above, that we should keep a perfect 
indifferency for all opinions, not wish any of them true, or try to make them 
appear so : but being indifferent, receive and embrace them according as evi- 
dence, and that alone, gives the attestation of truth. They that do thus, i. e. 
keep their minds indifferent to opinions, to be determined only by evidence, 
will always find the understanding has perception enough to distinguish be- 
tween evidence and no evidence, betwixt plain and doubtful ; and if they nei- 
ther give nor refuse their assent but by that measure, they will be safe in the 
opinions they have. Which being perhaps but few, this caution will have 
also this good in it, that it will put them upon considering, and teach them 
the necessity of examining more than they do ; without which the mind is but 
a receptacle .of inconsistencies, not the store-house of truths. They that do 
not keep up this indifferency in themselves for all but truth, not supposed, but 
evidenced in themselves, put coloured spectacles before their eyes, and look 
on things through false glasses, and then think themselves excused in follow- 
ing the false appearances which they themselves put upon them. I do not 
expect that by this way the assent should in every one be proportioned to the 
grounds and clearness wherewith every truth is capable to be made out ; or 
that men should be perfectly kept from error : that is more than human nature 
can by any means be advanced to ; I aim at no such unattainable privilege ; I 
am only speaking of what they should do, who would deal fairly with their 
own minds, and make a right use of their faculties in the pursuit of truth ; we 
fail them a great deal more than they fail us. It is mismanagement more 
than want of abilities that men have reason to complain of, and which they 
actually do complain of in those that differ from them. He that by indiffer- 
ency for all but truth suffers not his assent to go faster than his evidence, nor 
beyond it, will learn to examine, and examine fairly instead of presuming, 
and nobody will be at a loss, or in danger for want of embracing those truths 



514 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect. 34 

which are necessary in his station and circumstances. In any other way but 
this, all tne world are born to orthodoxy ; they imbibe at first the allowed 
opinions of their country and party, and so never questioning their truth, not 
one of an hundred ever examines. They are applauded for presuming they 
are in the right. He that considers is a foe to orthodoxy, because possibly 
he may deviate from some of the received doctrines there. And thus men, 
without any industry or acquisition of their own, inherit local truths (for it is 
not the same every where) and are inured to assent without evidence. This 
influences farther than is thought; for what one of an hundred of the zealous 
bigots in all parties ever examined the tenets he is so stiff in, or ever thought 
it his business or duty so to do? It is suspected of lukewarmness to suppose 
it necessary, and a tendency to apostacy to go about it. And if a man can 
bring his mind once to be positive and fierce for positions whose evidence he 
has never once examined, and that in matters of greatest concernment to him; 
what shall keep him from this short and easy way of being in the right in 
cases of less moment'? Thus we are taught to clothe our minds as we do our 
bodies, after the fashion in vogue, and it is accounted fantasticalness, or 
something worse, not to do so. This custom (which who dares oppose?) 
makes the short-sighted bigots, and the warier sceptics, as far as it prevails : 
and those that break from it .are in danger of heresy : for taking the whole 
world, how much of it doth truth and orthodoxy possess together? Though 
it is by the last alone (which has the good luck to be every where) that error 
and heresy are judged of: for argument and evidence signify nothing in the 
case, and excuse nowhere, but are sure to be borne down in all societies by 
the infallible orthodoxy of the place. Whether this be the way to truth and 
right assent, let the opinions, that take place and prescribe in the several 
habitable parts of the earth, declare. I never saw any reason yet why truth 
might not be trusted on its own evidence : I am sure if that be not able to 
support it, there is no fence against error; and then truth and falsehood are 
but names that stand for the same things. Evidence therefore is that by 
which alone every man is (and should be) taught to regulate his assent, who 
is then, and then only in the right way, when he follows it. 

Men deficient in knowledge are usually in one of these three states ; either 
wholly ignorant* or as doubting of some proposition they have either embraced 
formerly, or are at present inclined to ; or lastly, they do with assurance 
hold and profess without ever having examined, and being convinced by well- 
grounded arguments. The first of these are in the best state of the three, 
by having their minds yet in their perfect freedom and indifferency ; the like- 
lier to pursue truth the better, having no bias yet clapped on to mislead them. 

Sect. 35. — For ignorance, with an indifferency for truth, is nearer to it 
than opinion with ungrounded inclination, which is the great source of error; 
and they are more in danger to go out of the way who are marching under 
the conduct of a guide, that it is a hundred to one will mislead them, than he 
that has not yet taken a step, and is likelier to be prevailed on to inquire 
after the right way. The last of the three sorts are in the worst condition 
of all ; for if a man can be persuaded and fully assured of any thing for a 
truth, without having examined, what is there that he may not embrace for 
truth ? and if he has given himself up to believe a lie, what means is there 
1 eft to recover one who can be assured without examining ? To the other 
'wo this I crave leave to say, that as he that is ignorant is in the best state 
of the two, so he should persue truth in a method suitable to that state ; i. e. 
by inquiring directly into the nature of the thing itself, without minding the 
opinions of others, or troubling himself with their questions or disputes about 
it ; but to see what he himself can, sincerely searching after truth, find out. 
He that proceeds upon other principles in his inquiry into any sciences, 
though he be resolved to examine them and judge of them freely, does yet 
at least put himself on that side, and post himself in a party which he will 
not quit till he be beaten out ; by which the mind is insensibly engaged to make 
what defence it can, and so is unawares biassed. I do not say but a man 



Sect. 35. INDIFFERENCY. 515 

should embrace some opinion when he has examined, else he examines to no 
purpose ; but the surest and safest way is to have no opinion at all till he ha* 
examined, and that without any the least regard to the opinions or systems 
of other men about it. For example, were it my business to understand 
physic, would not the safe and readier way be to consult nature herself, and 
inform myself in the history of diseases and their cures ; than espousing the 
principles of the dogmatists, methodists, or chemists, to engage in all the 
disputes concerning either of those systems, and suppose it to be true, till 1 
have tried what they can say to beat me out of it ? Or, supposing that Hip- 
pocrates, or any other book, infallibly contains the whole art of physic ; 
would not the direct way be to study, read, and consider that book, weigh 
and compare the parts of it to find the truth, rather than espouse the doc- 
trines of any party] who, though they acknowledge his authority, have 
already interpreted and wiredrawn all his text to their own sense ; the tinc- 
ture whereof, when I have imbibed, I am more in danger to misunderstand 
his true meaning, than if I had come to him with a mind unprepossessed by 
doctors and commentators of my sect ; whose reasonings, interpretation, and 
language, which I have been used to, will of course make all chime that way, 
and make another, and perhaps the genuine meaning of the author seem 
harsh, strained, and uncouth to me. For words having naturally . none of 
their own, carry that signification to the hearer that he is used to put upon 
them, whatever be the sense of him that uses them. This, I think, is visibly 
so ; and if it be, he that begins to have any doubt of any of his tenets, which 
he received without examination, ought, as much as he can, to put himself 
wholly into this state of ignorance in reference" to that question ; and throw- 
ing wholly by all his former notions, and the opinions of others, examine, 
with a perfect indifferency, the question in its source ; without any inclination 
to either side, or any regard to his or others' unexamined opinions. This I 
own is no easy thing to do ; but I am not inquiring the easy way to opinion, 
but the right way to truth ; which they must follow who will deal fairly with 
their own understandings and their own souls. 

Sect. 36. Question. — The indifferency that I here propose will also enable 
them to state the question right, which they are in doubt about, without which 
they can never come to a fair and clear decision of it. 

Sect. 37. Perseverance. — Another fruit from this indifferency, and the 
considering things in themselves abstract from our own opinions and other 
men's notions and discourses on them, will be, that each man will pursue his 
thoughts in that method which will be most agreeable to the nature of the 
thing, and to his apprehension of what it suggests to him ; in which he 
ought to proceed with regularity and constancy, until he come to a well- 
grounded resolution wherein he may acquiesce. If it be objected that this 
will require every man to be a scholar, and quit all his other business, and 
betake himself wholly to study ; I answer, I propose no more to any one 
than he has time for. Some men's state and condition requires no great ex- 
tent of knowledge ; the necessary provision for life swallows the greatest 
part of their time. But one man's want of leisure is no excuse for the osci- 
tancy and ignorance of those who have time to spare ; and every one has 
enough to get as much knowledge as is required and expected of him, and 
he that does not that, is in love with ignorance, and is accountable for it. 

Sect. 38. Presumption. — The variety of distempers in men's minds is as 
great as of those in their bodies ; some are epidemic, few escape them ; and 
every one too, if he would look into himself, would find some defect of his 
particular genius. There is scarce any one without some idiosyncrasy that 
he suffers by. This man presumes upon his parts, that they will not fail 
him at time of need ; and so thinks it superfluous labour to make any pro- 
vision before-hand. His understanding is to him like Fortunatus's purse, 
which is always to furnish him, without ever putting any thing into it before- 
hand ; and so he sits still satisfied, without endeavouring to store his under- 
standing with knowledge. Tt is the spontaneous product of the country, and 



516 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect. 38. 

what need of labour in tillage 1 Such men may spread their native riches 
before the ignorant ; but they were best not come stress and trial with 
the skilful. We are born ignorant of every thing. The superficies of things 
that surround them make impressions on the negligent, but nobody penetrates 
into the inside without labour, attention, and industry. Stones and timber 
grow of themselves, but yet there is no uniform pile with symmetry and con- 
venience to lodge in without toil and pains. God has made the intellectual 
world harmonious and beautiful without us ; but it will never come into our 
heads all at once ; we must bring it home piecemeal, and there set it up by 
our own industry, or else we shall have nothing but darkness and a chaos 
within, whatever order and light there be in things without us. 

Sect. 39. Despondency. — On the other side, there are others that depress 
their own minds, despond at the first difficulty, and conclude that the getting 
an insight in any of the sciences, or making any progress in knowledge 
farther than serves their ordinary business, is above their capacities. These 
sit still, because they think they have not legs to go ; as the others I last 
mentioned do, because they think they have wings to fly, and can soar on 
high when they please. To these latter one may for answer apply the proverb, 
" Use legs and have legs." Nobody knows what strength of parts he has till 
he has tried them. And of the understanding one may most truly say, that its 
force is greater generally than it thinks, till it is put to it. Viresque acquirit 
eundo. And therefore the proper remedy here is but to set the mind to work, 
and apply the thoughts vigorously to the business ; for it holds in the struggles 
of the mind as in those of war, " Dum putant se vincere vicere ;" a persuasion 
that we shall overcome any difficulties that we meet with in the sciences, sel- 
dom fails to carry us through them. Nobody knows the strength of his mind, 
and the force of steady and regular application, till he has tried. This is cer- 
tain, he that sets out upon weak legs will not only go farther, but grow stronger 
too, than one who, with a vigorous constitution and firm limbs, only sits still. 

Something of kin to this men may observe in themselves, when the mind 
frights itself (as it often does) with any thing reflected on in gross, and tran- 
siently viewed confusedly, and at a distance. Things thus offered to the 
mind carry the show of nothing but difficulty in them, and are thought to be 
wrapt up in impenetrable obscurity. But the truth is, these are nothing but 
spectres that the understanding raises to itself to flatter its own laziness. It 
sees nothing distinctly in things remote, and in a huddle ; and therefore con- 
cludes too faintly, that there is nothing more clear to be discovered in them. 
It is but to approach nearer, and that mist of our own raising that enveloped 
them will remove ; and those that in that mist appeared hideous giants not to 
be grappled with, will be found to be of the ordinary and natural size and shape. 
Things, that in a remote and confused view seem very obscure, must be ap- 
proached by gentle and regular steps ; and what is most visible, easy, and obvi- 
ous in them first considered. Reduce them into their distinct parts ; and then in 
their due order bring all that should be known concerning every one of those 
parts into plain and simple questions ; and then what was thought obscure, 
perplexed, and too hard for our weak parts, will lay itself open to the under- 
standing in a fair view, and let the mind into that which before it was awed 
with, and kept at a distance from, as wholly mysterious. I appeal to my 
reader's experience, whether this has never happened to him, especially when, 
busy on one thing, he has occasionally reflected on another. I ask him 
whether he has never thus been scared with a sudden opinion of mighty diffi- 
culties, which yet have vanished, when he has seriously and methodically 
applied himself to the consideration of this seeming terrible subject; and 
there has been no other matter of astonishment left, but that he amused him- 
self with so discouraging a prospect, of his own raising, about a matter which 
in the handling was found to have nothing in it more strange nor intricate 
than several other things which he had long since and with ease mastered 1 
This experience would teach us how to deal with such bugbears another time, 
which should rather serve to excite our vigour than enervate our industry. 



Sect. 39. DESPONDENCY. 517 

The surest way for a learner in this, as in all other cases, is not to advance 
by jumps and large strides ; let that which he sets himself to learn next be 
indeed the next ; i. e. as nearly conjoined with what he knows already as is 
possible; let it be distinct but not remote from it : let it be new, and what he 
did not know before, that the understanding may advance; but let it be as 
little at once as may be, that its advances may be clear and sure. All the 
ground that it gets this way it will hold. This distinct gradual growth in 
knowledge is firm and sure ; it carries its own light with it in every step of 
its progression in an easy and orderly train ; than which there is nothing of 
more use to the understanding. And though this perhaps may seem a very 
slow and lingering way to knowledge, yet I dare confidently affirm, that who- 
ever will try it in himself, or any one he will teach, shall find the advances 
greater in this method than they would in the same space of time have been 
in any other he could have taken. The greatest part of true knowledge lies 
in a distinct perception of things in themselves distinct. And some men give 
more clear light and knowledge by the bare distinct stating of a question, 
than others by talking of it in gross whole hours together. In this, they who 
so state a question do no more but separate and disentangle the parts of it one 
from another, and lay them, when so disentangled, in their due order. This 
often, without any more ado, resolves the doubt, and shows the mind where 
the truth lies. The agreement or disagreement of the ideas in question, when 
they are once separated and distinctly considered, is, in many cases, presently 
perceived, and thereby clear and lasting knowledge gained; whereas things 
in gross taken up together, and so lying together in confusion, can produce in 
the mind but a confused, which in effect is no, knowledge ; or at least, when 
it comes to be examined and made use of, will prove little better than none. 
I therefore take the liberty to repeat here again what I have said elsewhere, 
that in learning any thing as little should be proposed to the mind at once as 
is possible ; and, that being understood and fully mastered, to proceed to the 
next adjoining part yet unknown, simple, unperplexed proposition belonging 
to the matter in hand, and tending to the clearing what is principally designed. 
Sect. 40. Analogy. — Analogy is of great use to the mind in many cases, 
especially in natural philosophy ; and that part of it chiefly which consists in 
happy and successful experiments. But here we must take care that we 
keep ourselves within that wiierein the analogy consists. For example, the 
acid oil of vitriol is found to be good in such a case, therefore the spirit of 
nitre or vinegar may be used. in the like case. If the good effect of it be 
owing wholly to the acidity of it, the trial may be justified ; but if there be 
something else besides the acidity in the oil of vitriol which produces the 
good we desire in the case, we mistake that for analogy which is not, and 
suffer our understanding to be misguided by a wrong supposition of analogy 
where there is none. 

Sect. 41. Association. — Though I have, in the second book of my Essay 
concerning Human Understanding, treated of the association of ideas ; yet 
having done it there historically, as giving a view of the understanding in this 
as well as its several other ways of operating, rather than designing there to 
inquire into the remedies that ought to be applied to it; it will, under this 
latter consideration, afford other matter of thought to those who have a mind 
to instruct themselves thoroughly in the right way of conducting their under- 
standings ; and that the rather, because this, if I mistake not, is as frequent 
a cause of mistake and error in us as perhaps any thing else that can be 
named, and is a disease of the mind as hard to be cured as any ; it being a 
very hard thing to convince any one that things are not so, and naturally so, 
as they constantly appear to him. 

By this one easy and unheeded miscarriage of the understanding sandy and 
loose foundations become infallible principles, and will not suffer themselves 
to be touched or questioned : such unnatural connexions become by custom as 
natural to the mind as sun and light, fire and warmth go together, and so 
seem to carry with them as natural an evidence as self-evident truths them- 



519 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect. 41 

-selves. And where then shall one with hopes of success begin the cure 1 
Many men firmly embrace falsehood for truth, not only because they never 
thought otherwise, but also because, thus blinded as they have been from the 
beginning, they never could think otherwise, at least without a vigour of mind 
able to contest the empire of habit, and look into its own principles ; a free- 
dom which few men have the notion of in themselves, and fewer are allowed 
the practice of by others ; it being the great art and business of the teachers 
and guides in most sects to suppress, as much as they can, this fundamental 
duty which every man owes himself, and is the first steady step towards right 
and truth in the whole train of his actions and opinions. This would give 
one reason to suspect that such teachers are conscious to themselves of the 
falsehood or weakness of the tenets they profess, since they will not suffer 
the grounds whereon they are built to be examined ; whereas those who seek 
truth only, and desire to own and propagate nothing else, freely expose their 
principles to the test: are pleased to have them examined; give men leave to 
reject them if they can ; and if there be any thing weak and unsound in them, 
are willing to have it detected, that they themselves, as well as others, may 
not lay any stress upon any received proposition beyond what the evidence of 
its truths will warrant and allow. 

There is, I know, a great fault among all sorts of people of principling 
their children and scholars, which at last, when looked into, amounts to no 
more but making them imbibe their teacher's notions and tenets by an implicit 
faith, and firmly to adhere to them whether true or false. What colours may 
be given to this, or of what use it may be when practised upon the vulgar, 
destined to labour, and given up to the service of their bellies, I will not here 
inquire. But as to the ingenuous part of mankind, whose condition allows 
them leisure, and letters, and inquiry after truth, I can see no other right way 
of principling them but to take heed, as much as may be, that in their tender 
years ideas that have no natural cohesion come not to be united in their heads ; 
and that this rule be often inculcated to them to be their guide in the whole 
course of their lives and studies, viz. that they never suffer any ideas to be join- 
ed in their understandings in any other or stronger combination than what their 
own nature and correspondence give them, and that they often examine those 
that they find linked together in their minds, whether this association of ideas 
be from the visible agreement that is in the ideas themselves, or from the ha- 
bitual and prevailing custom of the mind joining them thus together in thinking. 

This is for caution against this evil, before it be thoroughly rivetted by cus- 
tom in the understanding ; but he that would cure it when habit has estab- 
lished it, must nicely observe the very quick and almost imperceptible motions 
of the mind in its habitual actions. What I have said in another place about 
the change of the ideas of sense into those of judgment, may be proof of this. 
Let any one not skilled in painting be told, when he sees bottles, and tobacco- 
pipes, and other things so painted as they are in some places shown, that he 
does not see protuberances, and you will not convince him but by the touch: 
he will not believe that, by an instantaneous legerdemain of his own thoughts, 
me idea is substituted for another. How frequent instances may one meet 
with of this in the arguings of the learned, who not seldom, in two ideas that 
they have been accustomed to join in their minds, substitute one for the other : 
and, I am apt to think, often without perceiving it themselves ! This, whilst 
they are under the deceit of it, makes them incapable of conviction, and they 
applaud themselves as zealous champions for truth, when, indeed, they are 
contending for error. And the confusion of two different ideas, which a cus- 
tomary connexion of them in their minds hath made to them almost one, fills 
their head with false views, and their reasonings with false consequences. 

Sect. 42. Fallacies. — Right understanding consists in the discovery and 
adherence to truth, and that in the perception of the visible or probable agree - 
ment or disagreement of ideas, as they are affirmed and denied one of another. 
From whence it is evident, that the right use and conduct of the understand- 
ing, whose business is purely truth and nothing else, is, that the mind should 



Sect. 42. FALLACIES. 519 

be kept in a perfect indifferency, not inclining to either side, any farther than 
evidence settles it by knowledge, or the over-balance of probability gives it 
the turn of assent and belief; but yet it is very hard to meet with any discourse 
wherein one may not perceive the author not only maintain (for that is rea- 
sonable and fit) but inclined and biassed to one side of the question, with 
marks of a desire that that should be true. If it be asked me, how authors 
who have such a bias and lean to it may be discovered ? I answer, by ob- 
serving how in their writings or arguings they are often led by their inclina- 
tions to change the ideas of the question, either by changing the terms, or by 
adding and joining others to them, whereby the ideas under consideration are 
so varied as to be more serviceable to their purpose, and to be thereby brought 
to an easier and nearer agreement, or more visible and remoter disagreement ' 
one with another. This is plain and direct sophistry ; but I am far from 
thinking that wherever it is found it is made use of with design to deceive 
and mislead the readers. It is visible that men's prejudices and inclinations 
by this way impose often upon themselves ; and their affection for truth, under 
their prepossession in favour of one side, is the very thing that leads them from 
it. Inclination suggests and slides into their discourse favourable terms, 
which introduce favourable ideas ; till at last, by this means, that is concluded 
clear and evident, thus dressed up, which, taken in its native state, by making 
use of none but the precise determined ideas, would find no admittance at all. 
The putting these glosses on what they affirm; these, as they are thought, 
handsome, easy, and graceful explications of what they are discoursing on, is 
so much the character of what is called and esteemed writing well, that it is 
"ery hard to think that authors will ever be persuaded to leave what serves so 
well to propagate their opinions, and procure themselves credit in the world, 
for a more jejune and dry way of writing, by keeping to the same terms pre- 
cisely annexed to the same ideas ; a sour and blunt stiffness, tolerable in 
mathematicians only, who force their way, and make truth prevail by irre- 
sistible demonstration. 

But yet if authors cannot be prevailed with to quit the looser, though more 
insinuating ways of writing; if they will not think fit to keep close to truth 
and instruction by unvaried terms, and plain unsophisticated arguments ; yet 
it concerns readers not to be imposed on by fallacies, and the prevailing ways 
of insinuation. To do this, the surest and most effectual remedy is to fix in 
the mind the clear and distinct ideas of the question stripped of words ; and 
so likewise in the train of argumentation, to take up the author's ideas, ne- 
glecting his words, observing how they connect or separate those in the 
question. He that does this will be able to cast off all that is superfluous ; he 
will see what is pertinent, what coherent, what is direct to, what slides by 
the question. This will readily show him all the foreign ideas in the discourse, 
and where they were brought in ; and though they perhaps dazzled the writer, 
yet he will perceive that they give no light nor strength to his reasonings. 

This though it be the shortest and easiest way of reading books with profit, 
and keeping one's self from being misled by great names or plausible dis- 
courses ; yet it being hard and tedious to those who have not accustomed 
themselves to it, it is not to be expected that every one (among those few 
who really pursue truth) should this way guard his understanding from being 
imposed on by the wilful, or at least undesigned sophistry, which creeps into 
most of the books of argument. They, that write against their conviction, or 
that, next to them, are resolved to maintain the tenets of a party they are 
engaged in, cannot be supposed to reject any arms that may help to defend 
their cause, and therefore such should be read with the greatest caution. 
And they who write for opinions they are sincerely persuaded of, and believe 
to be true, think they may so far allow themselves to indulge their laudable 
affection to truth, as to permit their esteem of it to give it the best colours, 
and set it off with the best expressions and dress they can, thereby to gain it 
tne easiest entrance into the minds of their readers, and fix it deepest there. 

One of those being the state of mind we may justly suppose most writers to 
be in, it is fit their readers, who apply to them for instruction, should not lay 



520 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect. 42, 

by that caution which becomes a sincere pursuit of truth, and should make 
them always watchful against whatever might conceal or misrepresent it. It 
they have not the skill of representing to themselves the author's sense by 
pure ideas separated from sounds, and thereby divested of the false lights and 
deceitful ornaments of speech ; this yet they should do, they should keep the 
precise question steadily in their minds, carry it along with them through the 
whole discourse, and suffer not the least alteration in the terms, either by ad- 
dition, subtraction, or substituting any other. This every one can do who 
has a mind to it ; and he that has not a mind to it, it is plain, makes his under- 
standing only the warehouse of other men's lumber; I mean false and uncon- 
cluding reasonings, rather than a repository of truth for his own use ; which 
will prove substantial, and stand him in stead, when he has occasion for it. 
And whether such an one deals fairly by his own mind, and conducts his own 
understanding right, I leave to his own understanding to judge. 

Sect. 43. Fundamental verities. — The mind of man being very narrow, 
and so slow in making acquaintance with things, and taking in new truths, 
that no one man is capable, in a much longer life than ours, to know all truths ; 
it becomes our prudence, in our search after knowledge, to employ our 
thoughts about fundamental and material questions, carefully avoiding those 
that are trifling, and not suffering ourselves to be diverted from our main even 
purpose, by those that are merely incidental. How much of many young 
men's time is thrown away in purely logical inquiries, I need not mention. 
This is no better than if a man, who was to be a painter, should spend all his 
time in examining the threads of the several cloths he is to paint upon, and 
counting the hairs of each pencil and brush he intends to use in the laying on 
of his colours. Nay, it is much worse than for a young painter to spend his 
apprenticeship in such useless niceties ; for he, at the end of all his pains to 
no purpose, finds that it is not painting, nor any help to it, and so is really to 
no purpose : whereas men designed for scholars have often their heads so filled 
and warmed with disputes on logical questions, that they take those airy 
useless notions for real and substantial knowledge, and think their under- 
standings so well furnished with science, that they need not look any farther 
into the nature of things, or descend to the mechanical drudgery of experi 
ment and inquiry. This is so obvious a mismanagement of the understanding, 
and that in the professed way to knowledge, that it could not be passed by ; 
to which might be joined abundance of questions, and the way of handling of 
them in the schools. What faults in particular of this kind every man is, or 
may be guilty of, would be infinite to enumerate ; it suffices to have shown 
that superficial and slight discoveries and observations that contain nothing of 
moment in themselves, nor serve as clues to lead us into farther knowledge, 
should not be thought worth our searching after. 

There are fundamental truths that lie at the bottom, the basis upon which 
a great many others rest, and in which they have their consistency. These 
are teeming truths, rich in store, with which they furnish the mind, and, like 
the lights of heaven, are not only beautiful and entertaining • in themselves, 
but give light and evidence to other things, that without them could not be 
seen or known. Such is that admirable discovery of Mr Newton, that all 
bodies gravitate to one another, which may be counted as the basis of natural 
philosophy ; which of what use it is to the understanding of the great frame of 
our solar system, he has to the astonishment of the learned world shown; and 
how much farther it would guide us in other things if rightly pursued, is not 
yet known. Our Saviour's great rule, that " we should love our neighbour 
as ourselves," is such a fundamental truth for the regulating human society, 
that, I think, by that alone, one might without difficulty determine all the cases 
and doubts in social morality. These and such as these are the truths we 
should endeavour to find out, and store our minds with. Which leads me to 
another thing in the conduct of the understanding that is no less necessary, viz. 

Sect. 44. Bottoming. — To accustom ourselves, in any question proposed, 

to examine and find out upon what it bottoms. Most of the difficulties that 

o'-"" way, when well considered and traced, lead us to some proposi- 



Sect. 44. BOTTOMING. 521 

tion, which, known to be true, clears the doubt, and gives an easy solution 
of the question ; whilst topical and superficial arguments, of which there is 
store to be found on both sides, filling the head with variety of thoughts, and 
the mouth with copious discourse, serve only to amuse the understanding, 
and entertain company, without coming to the bottom of the question, the 
only place of rest and stability for an inquisitive mind, whose tendency is 
only to truth and knowledge. For example, if it be demanded, whether the 
grand seignor can lawfully take what he will from any of his people 1 ? This 
question cannot be resolved without coming to a certainty, whether all men 
are naturally equal ; for upon that it turns ; and that truth well settled in the 
understanding, and carried in the mind through the various debates concern- 
ing the various rights of men in society, will go a great way in putting an end 
to them, and showing on which side the truth is. 

Sect. 45. Transferring of thoughts. — There is scarce any thing more for 
the improvement of knowledge, for the ease of life, and the despatch of busi- 
ness, than for a man to be able to dispose of his own thoughts ; and there is 
scarce any thing harder in the whole conduct of the understanding than to 
get a full mastery over it. The mind, in a waking man, has always some 
object that it applies itself to ; which, when we are lazy or unconcerned, we 
can easily change, and at pleasure transfer our thoughts to another, and from 
thence to a third, which has no relation to either of the former. Hence men 
forwardly conclude, and frequently say, nothing is so free as thought, and it 
were well it were so ; but the contrary will be found true in several instances ; 
and there are many cases wherein there is nothing more resty and ungovern- 
able than our thoughts : they will not be directed what objects to pursue, nor 
be taken off from those they have once fixed on ; but run away with a man 
in pursuit of those ideas they have in view, let him do what he can. 

I will not here mention again what I have above taken notice of, how hard 
it is to get the mind, narrowed by a custom of thirty or forty years' standing 
to a scanty collection of obvious and common ideas, to enlarge itself to a 
more copious stock, and grow into an acquaintance with those that would 
afford more abundant matter of useful contemplation ; it is not of this I am 
here speaking. The inconveniency I would here represent, and find a remedy 
for, is the difficulty there is sometimes to transfer our minds from one subject 
to another in cases where the ideas are equally familiar to us. 

Matters, that are recommended to our thoughts by any of our passions, 
take possession of our minds with a kind of authority, and will not be kept 
out or dislodged; but, as if the passion that rules were, for the time, the she- 
riff of the place, and came with all the posse, the understanding is seized and 
taken with the object it introduces, as if it had a legal right to be alone con- 
sidered there. There is scarce any body, I think, of so calm a temper who 
hath not some time found this tyranny on his understanding, and suffered un- 
der the inconvenience of it. Who is there almost, whose mind, at some time 
or other, love or anger, fear or grief, has not so fastened to some clog, that it 
could not turn itself to any other object ) I call it a clog, for it hangs upon the 
mind so as to hinder its vigour and activity in the pursuit of other contempla- 
tions; and advances itself little or not at all in the knowledge of the thing which 
it so closely hugs and constantly pores on. Men thus possessed are sometimes 
as if they were so in the worst sense, and lay under the power of an en- 
chantment. They see not what passes before their eyes ; hear not the 
audible discourse of the company ; and when by any strong application to 
them they are roused a little, they are like men brought to themselves from 
some remote region ; whereas in truth they come no farther than their secret 
cabinet within, where they have been wholly taken up with the puppet, which 
is for that time appointed for their entertainment. The shame that such 
dumps cause to well bred people, when it carries them away from the com . 
pany, where they should bear a part in the conversation, is a sufficient argu- 
ment that it is a fault in the conduct of our understanding, not to have that 
power over it as to make use of it to those purposes, and on those occasions, 
3Q 



522 CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. Sect. 45. 

wherein we have need of its assistance. The mind should be always free 
and ready to turn itself to the variety of objects that occur, and allow them as 
much consideration as shall for that time be thought fit. To be engrossed so 
by one object, as not to be prevailed on to leave it for another that we judge 
fitter for our contemplation, is to make it of no use to us. Did this state of 
mind remain always so, every one would, without scruple, give it the name 
of perfect madness; and whilst it does last, at whatever intervals it returns, 
such a rotation of thoughts about the same object no more carries us forward 
towards the attainment of knowledge, than getting upon a mill horse whilst 
he jogs on in his circular track would carry a man a journey. 

I grant something must be allowed to legitimate passions, and to natural 
inclinations. Every man, besides occasional affections, has beloved studies, 
and those the mind will more closely stick to ; but yet it is best that it should 
be always at liberty, and under the free disposal of the man, and to act how 
and upon what he directs. This we should endeavour to obtain, unless we 
would be content with such a flaw in our understanding, that sometimes we 
should be as it were without it ; for it is very little better than so in cases 
where we cannot make use of it to those purposes we would, and which stand 
in present need of it. But before fit remedies can be thought on for this dis- 
ease, we must know the several causes of it, and thereby regulate the cure, 
if we will hope to labour with success. 

One we have already instanced in, whereof all men that reflect have so 
general a knowledge, and so often an experience in themselves, that nobody 
doubts of it. A prevailing passion so pins down our thoughts to the ob- 
ject and concern of it, that a man passionately in love cannot bring himself 
to think of his ordinary affairs, or a kind mother drooping under the loss of a 
child, is not able to bear a part as she was wont in the discourse of the com- 
pany, or conversation of her friends. But though passion be the most obvious 
and general, yet it is not the only cause that binds up the understanding, and 
confines it for the time to one object, from which it will not be taken off. 

Besides this, we may often find that the understanding, when it has awhile 
employed itself upon a subject which either chance, or some slight accident, 
offered to it, without the interest or recommendation of any passion, works 
itself into a warmth, and by degrees gets into a career, wherein, like a bowl 
down a hill, it increases its motion by going, and will not be stopped or diverted ; 
though, when the heat is over, it sees all this earnest application was about 
a trifle not worth a thought, and all the pains employed about it lost labour. 

There is a tlnj;d sort, if I mistake not, yet lower than this ; it is a sort of 
childishness, if I may so say, of the understanding, wherein, during the fit, it 
plays with and dandles some insignificant puppet to no end, nor with any de- 
sign at all, and yet cannot be easily got off from it. Thus some trivial sen- 
tence, or a scrap of poetry, will sometimes get into men's heads, and make 
such a chiming there, that there is no stilling of it ; no peace to be obtained, 
nor attention to any thing else, but this impertinent guest will take up the 
mind and possess the thoughts in spite of all endeavours to get rid of it. 
Whether every one hath experimented in themselves this troublesome in- 
trusion of some frisking ideas which thus importune the understanding, and 
hinder it from being better employed, I know not. But persons of very good 
parts, and those more than one, I have heard speak and complain of it them- 
selves. The reason I have to make this doubt, is from what I have known 
in a case something of kin to this, though much odder, and that is of a sort 
of visions that some people have lying quiet, but perfectly awake, in the dark, 
or with their eyes shut. It is a great variety of faces, most commonly very 
odd ones, that appear to them in a train one after another ; so that having 
had just the sight of the one, it immediately passes away to give place to an- 
other, that the same instant succeeds, and has as quick an exit as its leader ; 
and so they march on in a constant succession ; nor can any one of them by 
any endeavour be stopped or retained beyond the instant of its appearance, 
but is thrust out bv its follower, which will have its turn. Concerning *his 



Sect. 45. TRANSFERRING OF THOUGHTS. 523 

fantastical phenomenon I have talked with several people, whereof some have 
been perfectly acquainted with it, and others have been so wholly strangers 
to it, that they could hardly be brought to conceive or believe it. I knew a 
lady of excellent parts, who had got past thirty without having ever had the 
least notice of any such thing; she was so great a stranger to it, that when she 
heard me and another talking of it, could scarce forbear thinking we bantered 
her ; but some time after drinking a large dose of dilute tea, (as she was or- 
dered by a physician) going to bed, she told us at next meeting, that she had 
now experimented what our discourse had much ado to persuade her of. She 
had seen a great variety of faces in a long train, succeeding one another, as 
we had described ; they were all strangers and intruders, such as she had no 
acquaintance with before, nor sought after then ; and as they came of them- 
selves they went too ; none of them stayed a moment, nor could be detained 
by all the endeavours she could use, but went on in their solemn procession, 
just appeared and then vanished. This odd phenomenon seems to have a 
mechanical cause, and to depend upon the matter and motion of the blood or 
animal spirits. When the fancy is bound by passion, I know no way to set 
the mind free, and at liberty to prosecute what thoughts the man would make 
choice of, but to allay the present passion, or counterbalance it with another ; 
which is an art to be got by study, and acquaintance with the passions. 

Those who find themselves apt to be carried away with the spontaneous 
current of their own thoughts, not excited by any passion or interest, must 
be very wary and careful in all the instances of it to stop it, and never 
humour their minds in being thus triflingly busy. Men know the value of 
their corporeal liberty, and therefore suffer not willingly fetters and chains to 
be put upon them. To have the mind captivated is, for the time, certainly 
the greater evil of the two, and deserves our utmost care and endeavours to 
preserve the freedom of our better part. In this case our pains will not be 
lost; striving and struggling will prevail, if we constantly, on all such occa- 
sions, make use of it. We must never indulge these trivial attentions of 
thought; as soon as we find the mind makes itself a business of nothing, we 
should immediately disturb and check it, introduce new and more serious con- 
siderations, and not leave till we have beaten it off from the pursuit it was 
upon. This, at first, if we have let the contrary practice grow to a habit, 
will perhaps be difficult ; but constant endeavours will by degrees prevail, and 
at last make it easy. And when a man is pretty well advanced, and can 
command his mind off at pleasure from incidental and undesigned pursuits, it 
may not be amiss for him to go on farther, and make attempts upon medita- 
tions of greater moment, that at the last he may have the full power over his 
own mind, and be so fully master of his own thoughts, as to be able to trans- 
fer them from one subject to another, with the same ease that he can lay by 
any thing he has in his hand, and take something else that he has a mind to in 
the room of it. This liberty of mind is of great use both in business and 
study, and he that has got it will have no small advantage of ease and des- 
patch in all that is the chosen and useful employment of his understanding. 

The third and last way which I mentioned the mind to be sometimes taken 
up with, I mean the chiming of some particular words or sentence in the me- 
mory, and, as it were, making a noise in the head, and the like, seldom hap- 
pens but when the mind is lazy, or very loosely or negligently employed. It 
were better indeed to be without such impertinent and useless repetitions : 
any obvious idea, when it is roving carelessly at a venture, being of more 
use, and apter to suggest something worth consideration, than the insignifi- 
cant buzz of purely empty sounds. But since the rousing of the mind, and 
setting the understanding on work with some degrees of vigour, does for the 
most part presently set it free from these idle companions ; it may not be 
amiss, whenever we find ourselves troubled with them, to make use of so 
profitable a remedy that is always at hand. 



INDEX 



l 



TO 



ESSAY ON THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 



Anticipation, or first conceived opinions, 
hinder knowledge, 507. 

Assent, how it may he rightly given, 
512. 

Association of ideas, a disease of the un- 
derstanding, 517, &c. 

how to prevent and cure it, ib. 

Bottom of a question should be sought 
for, 520. 

Despondency of attaining knowledge, a 
great hinderance to the mind, 516. 

Desultoriness often misleads the under- 
standing, 500. 

Distinction, how it differs from division, 
510. 

how the understanding is im- 
proved by a right use of it, ib. 

Fallacies, how the understanding is mis- 
guided by them, 518. 

Fundamental truths, the mind should 
chiefly apply itself to them, 520. 

Haste, when too great, often misleads 
the understanding, 499. 

Ignorance, not so bad as groundless as- 
surance, 514. 

how it should be removed, ib. 

Indifferency for all truth should be che- 
rished, 496. 

the ill consequences of the 

want of it, 513. 

Mathematics, the usefulness of studying 
them, 493. 

Observation, very useful to improve 
knowledge, 498. 

Opinion, no one should be wished to be 
true, 495. 

Partiality in studies, 503. 

it misleads the understanding, ib. 

Farts, or abilities, their difference, 486. 

may be improved by a due conduct 

of the understanding, ib. 

Perseverance in study necessary to know- 
ledge, 515. 

Practice, or exercise of the mind, should 
not be beyond its strength, 508. 



Practice, the understanding is improved 
by it, 489. 

Prejudices, every one should find out, 
and get rid of his own, 495. 

Presumption, a great hinderance to the 
understanding, 515. 

Principles, when wrong, are very pre- 
judicial, 490, &c. 

we should carefully examine 

our own, 496. 

the usefulness of intermediate 



principles, 502. 

Question, should be rightly stated, be- 
fore arguments are used, 515. 

Reading, how the mind should be con- 
ducted in, 501. 

Reasoning, several defects therein men- 
tioned, 486, &c. 

how it should be improved, 488. 



Religion, it concerns all mankind to un- 
derstand it rightly, 494. 

Resignation, or flexibleness, often ob- 
structs knowledge, 508. 

Theology, should be studied by all men, 
503. 

Transferring of thoughts not easily at- 
tained, 521. 

causes of the difficulty of 

doing it, 522. 

Transferring, how this difficulty may be 
overcome, 523. 

Understanding, how it may be improved, 
489. 

man's last resort to it for 

conduct, 485. 

to be improved by practice 



and habit, 489. 

'herein the last judgment 



of it consists, 499, &c. 
Universality of knowledge, how it should 

be pursued, 500. 
Wandering, we should endeavour to 

keep our minds from it, 510. 
Words, should not be used without a 

fixed sense, 509. 



524 



THE END. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



